Fate: Silva Gelida
by Hieda no Akyuu
Summary: An FGO What-If. Fujimaru Ritsuka is diligently preparing for future Singularities after the events of the first two Epic of Remnant chapters when a botched combat simulation transports her unexpectedly into a Singularity previously undetected. She finds herself alone and completely cut off from the rest of Chaldea, until a small girl who claims to be a Servant finds her...
1. I Live

**A/N:**

**Yet another story, what a surprise. How many stories does this make again that I start and never finish? Doesn't matter, I'm hardly the only one with that problem.**

**This story will be a bit different; basically this is an idea that I've had for an imaginary Fate/Grand Order event story if I were allowed to draft it, or in other words a fan-made event story. Therefore, you'll be seeing quite a few OC's, and (perhaps to be expected) they'll be prominently featured throughout the story.**

**I've published a completed story a long time ago, one by the name of Song of Eden, and one of the critiques I received was that it was rather tedious reading the whole story in one chapter, since I didn't bother to split it up into chapters and just threw it up wholesale. So what I plan to do for this story is to write ten chapters of this story at a time, then upload one chapter a day once a batch is finished, while working on the next batch in the meantime so that hopefully I'll have a somewhat consistent upload schedule.  
**

**I'd also like to warn you here before you begin reading that the main character for this story is one I've featured in some of my other stories as well. If you've had the (dis)pleasure of reading the others, you may recognize them, along with whatever references they come with because I love me some references. Much like most of the other stories I've started and can barely finish, I've been sitting on this idea for a while and I've reached the point where I just have to put this on paper, but this time I'll actually put in the effort to bring a finished story...or so I say, if other things don't distract me like they always do.  
**

**To set the setting for this fan-made event story idea, I'll say that this takes place after sometime in between Agartha and Shimosa; this is mainly because as an NA FGO pleb, I only know the story up until Agartha. Maybe there's a more appropriate time frame that I can set this story as, but this is what I'll work with for now.**

**Oh, and I'll use Gudako, the female Ritsuka, as the Master in this story.**

**-TouhouSniper98**

* * *

"Rise and shiiiine, Ritsuka ~ ! And smeeeeeelllll ~ the aaaaaaashes ~ !"

Ritsuka can recognize that voice from three quarters across Chaldea, and now it's shaking the walls of her own room, or at least that's what it sounds like. Such is the voice of a self-proclaimed genius; it'll even convince the walls nearby that the voice is coming from a genius.

Snapping her eyes open immediately, the Chaldean Master sits upright steadily, rubbing her eyes lightly in her pajamas, and the glint of the subtle backglow of her Command Spells is still visible underneath the initial flare of the ceiling lights.

"Good morning, Da Vinci," Ritsuka says, in her moderately accented English. The past two years of saving the world multiple times over and working closely with a mainly English-speaking staff and her own beloved and self-proclaimed underclassman has done huge favors for her English, over which she once only possessed a tenuous grasp before she applied to Chaldea on a whim. Then again, being constantly put in life-or-death situations would understandably accelerate the language learning process much faster than school grades ever could, but what does Ritsuka know, she's not a genius like this certain other person in her room with her.

"_Buongiorno ~ ! _You're probably wondering where Mash is right now, aren't you?"

"...in the Control Room, setting up the next simulation, I'd imagine."

Da Vinci fakes a gasp, though it's obvious to Ritsuka. "Goodness! How much time have you two been spending together ever since you came back from the Temple of Time? You even know where Mash right when you wake up! There's untapped potential you have, Ritsuka, and _we must investigate!"_

She whips out a notepad and ink quill pen from behind her back as if she's about to interview the still slightly groggy Ritsuka, who has no idea how those items even got there in the first place.

"Paper and pen for research? You've really downgraded, huh. Did funding for the research branch get cut or something and I didn't hear about it?" Ritsuka asks a bit dully, pulling her legs out from underneath her covers to get out of bed.

"Hey, don't judge, okay? Sometimes geniuses like me from my era like doing things the old-fashioned way. And you know that recently I haven't gotten very many chances to do that."

"Oh, you're telling me."

Heading over to her small closet in the corner of her small room, Ritsuka places her hand on a square outline on the right door to her closet which acts as a biometric scanner, scanning her right handprint to unlock the doors with a pair of small clicks.

"Going straight into training again, huh?" Da Vinci asks her Master, in a noticeably softer tone than the cheerfully playful one that she greeted her with initially.

Ritsuka nods, putting on her default Mystic Code, the one that she's been using ever since she became a Master candidate of Chaldea. A Mystic Code that harkens back to earlier times, different times...better times, perhaps. But Ritsuka dwells on none of these things as she removes her bedclothes and puts her Mystic Code on.

"Going with the tried and true? Good choice. Remember, if you need any repairs on that, just let me know," Da Vinci reminds her.

"Yep, I know. Did you eat breakfast yet, by the way?"

"Yes, I did, in fact, thank you for asking. Just a light one, since eating too heavily in the morning can impede brain activity and performance..."

"What about Mash?"

Da Vinci's brows furrow. "That...I'm not sure of. I _figure_ she's responsible enough to take care of herself, but..."

"I'll go ask her right now, then."

"Sounds good. I need to head back to the Control Room anyway to double check the Simulations. Mash has gotten really good at setting them up, but every so often she'll make a mistake...remember the other day where _twenty_ Chimeras spawned instead of two? I checked back, and I'm pretty sure Mash accidentally put in a zero where there shouldn't have been..."

Ritsuka grimaces a bit. "Then it was a really good thing that we had Artoria with us..." she sighs with relief as she and Da Vinci exit her room once she's done dressing and head towards the Control Room. "Those were Super Chimeras, too, the ones we ran into at Shinjuku..."

"No kidding. Training is good, and it's great that you've been diligent at it all this time, but given how we've set up the simulations..."

"Yeah, I know."

"You need to be stricter on Mash sometimes, you know," Da Vinci pouts at Ritsuka. "I know that you know why she's working so hard like this."

"I do, but...I feel like it's worse if I stop her from doing what she wants to," Ritsuka protests calmly. "To be honest, if I were in her shoes, I'd...probably do the same thing. Do whatever I can to help the person most important to me...especially after I've lost the power I once had."

Da Vinci sighs too, then nods sympathetically. "Indeed, Mash has done much better than I thought she would after we told her at the start of Shinjuku that she couldn't follow you into these Remnant Singularities lately due to her condition. Ah, if only I'd taken her under _my _wing, imagine how great of an assistant she'd be ~ "

"Please don't fantasize about stealing other people's underclassmen, Da Vinci."

"Awwww ~ "

"That's my job."

"Eeek! The truth comes out!"

Laughing together, Ritsuka and Da Vinci soon reach the Control Room, where several staff members dressed in the usual Chaldean white and green are at their stations, monitoring Shiva and other vital systems. In the center of the large room, standing at the large digital table in the middle that helps give the Control Room a war room-like feeling are Mash and a pair of Servants, namely Tamamo the Caster and Emiya the Archer. At the sound of their entry into the Control Room, Mash looks up and waves good morning enthusiastically as ever to her Master and best friend, Ritsuka.

"Good morning, Senpai. Did you sleep well?" Mash asks, the same question that Mash has greeted Ritsuka with for the past two years, and for some reason Ritsuka has never once gotten tired of answering it.

"Yep. And did you eat breakfast today?" Ritsuka returns.

"Er - " Mash hesitates for just a second before answering quickly with a "Yes, I did. Mr. Emiya was on cooking duty today, so it was really good!"

"Like I keep telling you, Mash, you can drop the 'Mr.'," Emiya sighs.

But this doesn't fool Ritsuka. Having been with her for two years, the first year of which being spent pretty much constantly by her side, the Chaldean Master knows that that slight pause when confronted with a question she can't comfortably answer means that Mash is probably lying.

"Oh really? What was the food today?" Ritsuka challenges Mash, who pauses again.

"Uh, chicken omurice! With miso soup on the side."

So I turn to Emiya to confirm. "Did you serve that for breakfast today?"

And as Ritsuka suspects, Emiya shakes his head. "Today's breakfast was more of your generic American breakfast, as per the request of Edison and Paul. Hashbrowns, mashed potatoes with light gravy, sweet corn, three strips of bacon, two sausage patties, two eggs either sunny side up, over easy, or scrambled with salt, and either two flapjacks or two pieces of French toast with maple syrup and butter. I also added baby carrots, broccoli, and fresh baby tomatoes since vegetables are important, even for Servants, served with orange juice, apple juice, or milk," he answers. "And, I'm sure you've figured this out by now, but I most certainly did _not _see Mash at mess hall today."

So Ritsuka eyes Mash suspiciously, eyes that Mash cannot look straight back into.

"I-I'm sorry, Senpai! I just – I just was trying to get this simulation set up properly because I messed up the other day accidentally spawning in twenty Chimeras...!" Mash cries, hiding her eyes behind her hands as if that's really going to help her case. "I was so scared that I'd make another mistake like that, so I was just making sure that there weren't any other mistakes for this one...!"

"It's true. Poor girl's been in here for the past two and a half hours double-checking, triple-checking, quadruple-checking that there weren't any errors in the simulation code..." Tamamo no Mae coos sympathetically, giving Mash a soothing hug to calm her down. "I'd do the same thing if I were her. I'd feel terrible too! By the way, what comes after quadruple?"

"Quintuple," Emiya answers. "Don't make me talk about what comes after that."

"Oya? Why not?" Tamamo asks innocently, but thankfully for Emiya, Ritsuka motions for Tamamo to let go of Mash so that she can talk to her.

"Mash, we've had this talk before. I appreciate you going the extra mile to help me in whatever way you can, but honestly the biggest thing you can do to help me is just to look after yourself," Ritsuka says earnestly. "At the risk of sounding ignorant because maybe you've already thought of this yourself, but don't you think that your mistakes lately are the result of you not eating properly and sleeping properly? It's not like I don't know about what you've been doing."

Mash nods sheepishly. "You're right, I...I haven't...really been taking care of myself very well. It's just that...ever since the Remnant Singularities started showing up, I see you continue training like we used to in between Singularities before the Time Temple, and...and since I can't fight right now, it just motivates me to keep doing my best in whatever I can do to assist, you know?"

"If only the rest of the staff had the same kind of motivation that Mash has..." Da Vinci laments dramatically. "We'd pinpoint these other Remnants in no time and bully the other Demon Pillars out of existence."

"We're trying our best, ma'am!" one of the nearby staff members responds immediately with a salute, causing the Servants and the others to chuckle in response.

"But in any case, really, you should look after yourself," Ritsuka tells Mash firmly. "Matter of fact, I wanted to grab some breakfast before starting training today. Wanna come join me?"

Mash brightens up immediately at the prospect. "Y-Yes, of course! I'm...I'm actually really hungry, too..."

"And how long were you planning to work before you finally would've gone to eat if I didn't ask you now?"

"Uhhh..." Mash looks away again darkly, completely unwilling to answer.

"Be honest with me, please."

"...until I...made _absolute _sure...that this simulation for today didn't have any errors...?"

"And how long would _that_'ve taken?"

"...no comment."

Immediately, Ritsuka seizes her underclassman by the scruff of her shirt and turns to Tamamo and Emiya.

"Is breakfast still being served? If not, I might need to request emergency breakfast services just for today because Mash is going to starve herself working here," the Master asks with a genuine but also joking sense of urgency.

"Of course ~ ! Who else to turn to than your lovely top-tier Arts Caster, Tamamo-chan ~ ?" Tamamo prances a little in response. "That, and I was only here because Mash asked me for advice on which enemies to set for today's simulation..."

"Incidentally, she set all _Assassin _Class enemies for today..." Emiya groans somewhat.

"Personally, I see nothing wrong with that," Da Vinci smirks as Ritsuka puts on a look of pained discomfort. "Oh, but I guess Ritsuka does, though."

"Er...I'm..." Ritsuka sighs, still sounding pained. "...I'm not a fan of the Ghosts...or the Werewolves..."

"It's okay, Master, a nice warm bowl of fresh rice and miso soup'll be more than enough to get rid of those bad memories. Remember, I make the best miso soup in the world! Or at least here in Chaldea."

Emiya raises his eyebrows, then folds his arms slowly and dramatically, which the man has a tendency of doing whenever he engages in something he feels personally about.

"That sounds like a challenge, Miss Tamamo. You _do _know what you're getting yourself into, yes?" he smiles subtly.

"Oh, but of course. I'll concede that you are very knowledgeable about a variety of cuisines, Emiya-kun, but when it comes to cooking, you're just a jack of all trades, and the master of none. I'll show you who the _true _Gordon Ramsay of Japanese cuisine is around these parts!"

"And so the challenge is officially issued. I figured we would have this moment at some point, sooner or later. It was only a matter of time," Archer chuckles with a tone of anticipation that is unique to the feeling of one wanting to prove oneself superior. "Well, as they say, this Chaldea certainly isn't big enough for _two _Japanese culinary masters."

"Right you are, Red Man! Without a doubt, our battle will be _legendary!" _Tamamo puts her hands on her hips and puffs out her ample chest, doing so with such force that the bosom of her blue kimono gets tugged down by the size of her breasts, threatening to descend more than what would keep this story PG-13. Thankfully, the genre-savvy Ritsuka quickly fixes Tamamo's dress for her before anything bad can happen.

"As much as this Hell's Kitchen would be quite the morning entertainment, I need to give Mash's simulation work some professional overview," Da Vinci clears her throat to bring the situation back to reality before turning to Mash and Ritsuka. "You two can take your time with breakfast. And make sure Mash eats everything on her plate, okay?"

Ritsuka nods and snaps off a crisp salute. "Understood, Generalissimo Da Vinci!" she barks back.

"G-Generalissimo..." Da Vinci can't stop herself from feeling flustered over being addressed like this. "Ritsuka, can you say that just _one _more time, please - "

"No."

Da Vinci grasps her chest. "Oof...! My poor heart – who else can fix my bruised ego now...?"

* * *

After making sure that Mash has indeed eaten her proper fill and escaping the Hell's Kitchen that the mess hall has turned into as a result of Tamamo and Emiya having their legendary showdown with a good chunk of Chaldea's Servant roster participating as the live audience, Ritsuka and Mash return to the Control Room.

"Ah, good timing, you two," Da Vinci greets them again, waving them over to the center table where she's been fine-tuning the simulation that Mash has been working on for the morning. "I've made edits to the simulation so it should be safe. I've also been working on simulation enhancements so that we can simulate AI interaction, kind of like the interactions you've been having in all these Singularities, but I do need to have Ritsuka enter the the Simulation field so that I can get some data that the enhancements I want to put in need first."

"Sure thing. The others will be here once Tamamo's and Emiya's duel out in the mess hall ends," Ritsuka notifies Da Vinci.

"Hm, and when is _that _supposed to end, exactly?"

Ritsuka simply gives a slow, vague shrug.

"Mm, that's...what I was afraid of. Oh well, good for us, it gives me more time to recalibrate the simulations. We can also have a tactics meeting, just the three of us, in preparation for the next Remnant, whenever that shows up."

So Ritsuka heads over to the door leading to the Simulation field just outside while Mash is asking Da Vinci about how much she's altered the simulation in their absence. The Chaldean staff has vacated the Control Room so that she, Mash, and Da Vinci are the only ones in the Control Room, which means that Ritsuka is the sole living being that enters the Simulation Field, where occupants are engaged in simulations run by the Control Room next door. Usually Ritsuka would be accompanied by a varying number of Servants who would join her for her daily training, so entering the Simulation field alone is a novelty that she isn't sure whether to enjoy or ignore.

Positioning herself in her usual spot for the beginnings of simulations, Ritsuka waits for either Da Vinci or Mash to begin speaking to her over the intercom, and sure enough, Da Vinci's pokes through.

"_Alright, Ritsuka, the enhancement calibrations are about to be underway. It should only take a minute or so."_

"Do I need to do anything in particular? Or just standing is fine?" Ritsuka calls back.

"_No, just stay like that, you're fine. Alright, beginning calibration in three, two, one..."_

The simulation field begins to glow, signifying the beginning of a simulation coming online. The walls of the large room starts to distort, with cubes forming out of them as if someone is pressing square-shaped cookie cutter molds into them like cookie dough. The colors in the walls shift from dark blue and black to gray, continuing to become lighter until they reach a state of pure white as the cubes being cut out from the walls begin to slowly float up into the air like bubbles.

As she's watching the cubes ascend into the whitening sky, Ritsuka only now realizes that she's feeling lightheaded, and that for some reason, it's becoming progressively more and more difficult for her sense of self, as if her mental consciousness is rapidly evaporating.

This is not a simulation. Something has gone wrong.

"Da Vinci...?" Ritsuka calls out, but due to her mental fatigue, if she can even call it that, her voice doesn't come out as strongly as she wants it to, so she puts in much more effort to make herself heard. "Da Vinci, can you hear me? Something – I think something's...going...wro - "

Parts of her vision blurs horribly all of a sudden, but before she even gets a chance to register in her head that her eyesight is compromised, Ritsuka hears the sound of cold, icy hot steel tearing its way through flesh. Realizing that her body is suddenly being weighed down by dozens of extra pounds that most definitely is not body fat, she looks down to see a total of six black swords fixed inside her body, protruding out from both her front and back.

What surprises her more, however, is the absence of blood.

As it turns out, she doesn't have the time to wonder why there is none, either. The moment Ritsuka looks up, one final blade pops her in the face, right between the eyes.

* * *

_"Listen only to the sound of my voice._

"_Let your mind relax._

"_Let your thoughts drift._

"_Let the bad memories fade._

"_Let peace be upon you._

"_Surrender yourself to your dreams._

"_Let them wash over you like the gentle waves of the bluest ocean._

"_Let them envelope you._

"_Comfort you._

"_Imagine somewhere calm._

"_Imagine somewhere safe._

"_Imagine yourself...in a frozen forest."_

* * *

Unfamiliar words whispered by an unfamiliar voice...it's enough to stir Ritsuka out of her mysterious slumber, and she pushes herself up from the ground, though still seated as she shakes her head and clasps her hand against her face where she feels like something very sharp just punched her in between the eyes.

A cold sensation immediately greets the skin on her forehead, which helps wake her up a bit more at the startling sensation. She glances at her right hand, which is covered in...snow.

Slowly becoming bewildered at her vague situation, Ritsuka shakes her head more vigorously to force herself to come to her senses and takes an initial look around at her surroundings. She finds herself laying on snow-covered ground next to a small little bank of snow that's built up behind her, or perhaps it was already there when she got here somehow, laying at the bottom of a morose, withered, and blackened young tree that has a grand total of three branches. A tree whose life has been stopped before it could truly grow.

It's hardly the only tree in the area. Tall trees of varying sizes stand tall, with some of the larger ones towering into the sky like small skyscrapers; they remind Ritsuka of the big trees she's seen in the forests of America during the Fifth Singularity or the ones in Babylonia during the Seventh, but unlike those trees, these ones seem ominous, frozen...dead.

Small flakes of snow flutter down from the sky, which appears to be perpetually blanketed by murky white clouds that are so thick it's impossible tell where the sun is. A small stream, presumably made by melting snow and ice somewhere further ahead, flows eerily quietly not far in front of her, and boulders and rocks also of varying sizes dot the snow, interspersed throughout this forest landscape with the silent, cold trees.

Speaking of the cold, Ritsuka feels gripped by the cold that fills the atmosphere. Having been to many different kinds of Singularities, even being the mediocre mage that she is from a conventional standpoint, she's since developed a sense of detecting ambient magic in the atmosphere. So drawing from this experience, Ritsuka determines quietly to herself that it's as if this place is simply devoid of any and all ambient magic energy. Whether or not this alleged lack of ambient magic is the cause for the cold is something she can't explain on her own, but given that the cold is penetrating her Mystic Code, which is at least supposed to protect her from the elements to a degree, it's clear that the cold is not natural. It's not quite cold enough where it's causing Ritsuka serious discomfort or is putting her life in immediate danger, but it's definitely something that she'll have to get used to during her time here in this strange land...however long that she'll be stuck here.

Clapping her hands against her cheeks, Ritsuka gathers herself one more time and mentally prepares herself. This isn't the first time she's been dragged into another world randomly like this. After all, she's already been through Dantes' Prison Tower and the like, and she's survived those; there's no reason why she wouldn't be able to fight her way out of this one, too.

Though, admittedly, in those situations, she had Servants and comrades to work with. Here, there is not another soul in sight. Just Ritsuka, the trees, the snow, the water, the rocks, and the cold.

Not knowing what her next course of action should be, Ritsuka, slightly absentmindedly, looks back up at the sky, having to squint due to her vision still in the process of recovering fully.

A single butterfly floats lightly through the air. Ritsuka isn't sure how high in the air it's flying. Is it flying? Or is it floating? She's not sure. Its wings are black, and its body is white. If nothing else, the mere sight of it flapping its wings through the air is enough to give Ritsuka the impression that at least something, anything, in this forest besides her is actually alive, because until now, this place hasn't done a good job in suggesting otherwise. Ritsuka blinks, her eyes watering slightly from staring up at the murky clouds that still irritate her eyes somewhat.

The butterfly is gone.

Not thinking much of it, Ritsuka lowers her gaze. If her previous Singularities have taught her anything, even if she can't always make good on it, it's that she needs to take action first. So she'll try to do just that -

"Good morning."

Ritsuka almost jumps out of her boots at the sound of the soft voice.

A small girl is standing before her, behind the small stream that separates them. She seems to be about Jack the Ripper's height and wears a painfully plain black dress bordered with white felt, with matching Mary Jane shoes on her feet and sleeves that are prim and proper. Her clothes are so plain, in fact, that they accentuate what's perhaps the most distinctive feature about her: her quiet, silky and metallic white hair that drapes down to the backs of her shoulders with no particular hairstyle. And because there is no wind around them, everything about this girl is still. Frozen still, if you will.

Her eyes are closed. Yet her face is angled up at Ritsuka's, as if she were looking straight back into her eyes if her own were open.

This girl was definitely not standing where she is now just a moment ago.

Feeling the need to speak first, Ritsuka swallows the cold spit in her mouth to help herself gather courage and asks,

"Where's Da Vinci? Where's Mash? And...where is this place? What is this place?"

Ritsuka doesn't know what to expect, especially not in a situation like this, so whatever the girl does in response will come as a surprise. And surprisingly enough, the girl answers.

"0730 hours. Date: unidentifiable. Rendezvous with the Master of the Chaldea Security Organization completed. Initial vitals scan indicates slight disorientation, effects negligible."

The girl now begins to step forward, dipping a foot into the stream once before reaching Ritsuka's side of the forest. Instinctively backing away from the girl, Ritsuka keeps her eyes peeled on her as she stops now just a few meters away, at which point, due to her walking, she now sees the small black cross that she wears on a frail-looking necklace that rests on her chest. The ornament blends in perfectly with her dress, so it practically vanishes if the girl is standing still.

"Er..." Ritsuka doesn't quite know what to say, and she just stares back at the girl. While her voice is not quite monotone, it's serenely quiet and calm, almost _too _calm. It's a wonder how Ritsuka can even manage to hear her talking at all with how quiet her voice is. She then adds, softly:

"Welcome to the Silva Gelida."

Ritsuka continues to gaze down at this mysterious little girl. She is standing incredibly still – almost like a robot, an inanimate object; it certainly matches her robotic, computer-like , and the fact that there's no wind blowing right now just makes it worse because the girl's clothes and hair aren't moving as they normally might be in any other situation, so the eerie atmosphere is compounded by the girl's mere presence in the area.

Thankfully, the girl begins to speak again, which somewhat breaks up the chilling air about her.

"This subject requires the assistance of a Master to fulfill its current mission profile; requesting permission to establish temporary Servant-Master contract for the duration of mission profile."

Staring blankly back at the little girl, Ritsuka slowly raises her hand with her Command Spells on it, and they glow with their confident red aura as the contract is silently established between the two.

"Confirming successful establishment of contract," the girl nods lightly. "Ritsuka Fujimaru, Cause-Rank Mage of the Clock Tower Association. The pleasure is mine."

Ritsuka can't help but just stare down at the little girl dressed in black for a few minutes. For those few minutes, the girl also stares back, still with closed eyes that do not open.

"...who are you?" she finally asks.

"Jeannie," the girl replies crisply. "Jeannie...Sawatari."


	2. Blacklight

About ten minutes later, Ritsuka finds herself following her newly contracted Servant through the forest, trudging through the light layer of snow that, for some reason, despite there clearly being a little bit of snow always steadily falling from the cloudy sky, is not building up any higher than it is. Her own breath is visible, as she would expect from being out in the cold like this, but no such breath exits from Jeannie.

They have been walking for these last ten minutes through the forest ever since Jeannie informed her that Ritsuka must follow her. Jeannie still hasn't answered her questions about where Da Vinci, Mash, and the rest of Chaldea are, so mustering up her courage again, Ritsuka steels her resolve and asks up a second time,

"Um, Jeannie, do you know where...Da Vinci and the others are? This...is this the calibration that Da Vinci was talking about?"

Ritsuka is pretty sure that this is most definitely _not _the calibration that she was supposed to go through, but she figures she might as well ask anyway just to be sure.

"Da Vinci? The others?" Jeannie asks quietly back, not bothering to turn around to look at Ritsuka as she continues to walk, as if walking is more important than addressing her new Master properly. "Jeannie is unable to identify requested names."

"Then...is this...is this a simulation? Where are we?"

This time, for whatever reason, Jeannie does stop and turn around to look at her Master.

"Master, you appear to have a Japanese name. Would you like us to speak in Japanese?" she suggests.

A small bit of relief washes over Ritsuka. She only speaks Japanese to her other Japanese Servants back in Chaldea, and while she does speak her fair share due to the number of Japanese Servants she has, Ritsuka still can't help but feel at least a bit better that Jeannie's asked her this. Come to think of it, Jeannie's last name, Sawatari, must be Japanese too...why didn't she think to ask her this herself?

"Yes, of course!" Ritsuka answers swiftly in Japanese.

To her utmost surprise, Ritsuka finds Jeannie smiling back at her. It's a tiny smile, and when Ritsuka blinks, it's gone instantly, just like that, gone so fast that she isn't sure whether or not there even was a smile there to begin with. No...with how stoic and robotic Jeannie's movements and expressions have been, any change to them at all is immediately noticeable, so Ritsuka is certain that there was a smile there.

"Jeannie sees that Japanese is your native tongue," the young Servant notes aloud.

"Y-Yeah. How did you know?"

"Name and accent."

"Name and accent...?"

"First, your name. Second, your English carries a noticeable accent. The accent matches that of a native Japanese speaker using English as a means of communication."

"So you switched to Japanese so that we can talk more comfortably, huh?"

Jeannie nods, having continued to walk once they start talking in fluent Japanese.

"Affirmative. In addition, Jeannie wishes to explain the situation so that Master may grasp it as coherently as possible."

"Oh, okay...right. Um..." Ritsuka scratches her orange-blonde hair a bit. "So...this...this isn't a simulation...is it."

"Affirmative. Silva Gelida is a mental state given physical parameters. From whence Jeannie comes, it is called a 'dreamworld'. Using the terminology of your world, Jeannie estimates the closest term to it would be a 'Reality Marble'."

A Reality Marble...Ritsuka's heard the term thrown around by the Chaldea staff and some of her Servants from time to time.

"Then where are we? Where exactly is this place, um...in relation to Chaldea?" Ritsuka asks. "You know about Chaldea already, right? Since you've already mentioned it yourself a few times."

"Jeannie has managed to glean a small amount of pertinent information regarding Master at the time of recall," Jeannie answers with her usual small voice, her just as small feet patting the snow beneath them, as if she were patting the top of a soft pillow. "Intel on entity [Chaldea] minimal. Best conclusion: Chaldea is a group or organization with which Master is affiliated. End intel."

The more Jeannie speaks, the more questions start popping into Ritsuka's mind that continue to swim around because Ritsuka feels like she isn't going to be able to ask them as fast as she wants to.

"Then – then I think it's best if we introduce ourselves first. I mean, we should've done this before when we first met," Ritsuka suggests this time.

"Introductions already completed at the time of rendezvous," Jeannie replies, and oddly enough, there's a definite tone of puzzlement carried with her voice.

"Well, yeah, but – I mean, as in, let's introduce ourselves more. We're Servant and Master by now, right?" Ritsuka quickly answers back in order to justify her request. "Since you don't know about Chaldea and...I don't know about what this place is, and...well, anyway, I'll go first. I'm Fujimaru Ritsuka, and I'm the Master of the Chaldea Security Organization..."

After spending the next ten or so minutes explaining herself and her story while they continue to walk through this seemingly never-ending forest, Ritsuka waits for Jeannie to reciprocate.

"Master-relevant information saved, stored, and cached," Jeannie nods curtly. "Unfortunately, Jeannie must report that her own memory files are lacking critical portions of information."

Hearing this, Ritsuka feels her heart sink a bit. "Um...do you mean that you have amnesia, or...?" she asks timidly, afraid that this might anger Jeannie somewhat, with the way she's asking. To her relief, though, Jeannie shakes her head.

"Self-diagnosis inconclusive. Jeannie retains full possession over information caches immediately relevant to the mission profile, which includes name, combat abilities, and current objectives. This does not include personal history and majority of memory files."

"So...partial amnesia."

Jeannie pauses, then nods in agreement.

"Suggestion accepted. Self-diagnosis: partial amnesia."

Ritsuka can't help but give a little smile at this.

"In exchange, proceeding to transmit relevant information to current situation and mission profile," Jeannie says. "Silva Gelida is a dreamworld; it is not a simulation. According to intel, Silva Gelida was constructed by Jeannie, and the mission profile demands maintenance of this dreamworld."

"This is...this is your dreamworld?"

Jeannie nods. "But Jeannie is not personally aware of this fact. How Jeannie has constructed it, why she has constructed it...unknown variables. Part of Jeannie's personal mission profile is to identify these variables and act accordingly based on what she discovers."

"Then, is it safe to say that this...this place isn't supposed to be here? Because...because I certainly wasn't meant to be here, I don't think."

"High possibility."

"But you mentioned something about a recall...and it sounded like you brought me here on purpose."

"Affirmative. Mission profile includes acquisition of a Master for a stable supply of mana; without a Master, mission profile is impossible to achieve alone."

"Hm...then, where are we going now? And what are we gonna do?"

"Current objective: travel to each of the three data stations Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie in this area. These data stations house three magical generators that must be reactivated to bring Silva Gelida to full capacity. In addition, these data stations possess critical mission-sensitive data packs that Jeannie must secure to bring Silva Gelida to full operational capacity. Once this is complete, Master will be able to return to Chaldea safely."

Ritsuka again breathes a sigh of relief, though she can't help but grow worried at the implications. "Then this is only a temporary contract?" she asks Jeannie. "What'll happen to you at the end?"

"Unknown."

Even though it's clear that Jeannie talks and acts a bit like a computer, the sheer brevity and exactness of that response sends a few chills down Ritsuka's spine.

"Well...I've already been in situations kind of like this where we meet Servants who end up coming with us back to Chaldea," Ritsuka suggests. "If it turns out to be something bad, you can always reconsider and come join us in Chaldea."

"Response inconclusive. Further intel required."

Ritsuka will have to take that as a no for now, so she attempts to switch the direction of the conversation instead.

"And what about your Class? I don't think you told me what Class you were..." the Chaldean Master asks.

"Saber."

"Saber...?"

Since Ritsuka's been walking behind Jeannie all this time, she's gotten a pretty good idea of what she looks like, at least from behind, and she still vividly remembers what she looks like from the front. It's safe to say that there is nothing that quite resembles a sword on Jeannie's person, unless she counts the crosses on Jeannie's dress.

"Also Archer."

"..._and_ Archer?"

"And Lancer."

"Wait, wait, wait," Ritsuka blurts out, and Jeannie stops to turn around at her new Master, as if that were a command. "You mean that you can be either one of those three, right? So what's the Class you're in now?"

"Saber, Archer, and Lancer," Jeannie repeats coolly.

"...so, as in, all three at once...?"

Jeannie nods.

"But I've...I've never heard of a Servant being able to be multiple Classes at once. I have Servants who can switch to other Classes because they qualify for them, but..."

"Reasons unknown," Jeannie nods again, but this time in understanding. "Jeannie possesses basic information about Servants and the Summoning System. While Servants may qualify for multiple classes, as you say, a Servant must be bound to a single class container under normal circumstances upon summoning. But current circumstances dictate otherwise."

Raising a hand up to her lips in thought, Jeannie deliberates quietly.

"Hypothesis: Silva Gelida is a foreign entity to Master's world, and by recalling Master here, it has gained certain properties of Master's world, namely those of the Servant Summoning System. But such properties may have been corrupted upon implementation, resulting in a corrupted or altered Servant container for J - "

Before Jeannie can finish, though, she immediately silences herself, her ears twitching slightly. At first Ritsuka wonders what's prompted her to act this way, but out of her peripheral vision, she sees wispy black smoke spontaneously venting up from the light layer of snow around them. Their spawns seem to be random; they appear next to trees, out in the open, in groups or clusters, or by interspersed more or less evenly.

About thirty or so of these piles of black hazy smoke appear, and soon enough, these small smoke piles condense and solidify into shapes – horribly disfigured shapes that end up looking roughly like humanoid shadows that remind Ritsuka of Shadow Servants, except these ones don't seem to behave human. They're more like zombies with the way they retch, twitch, look, and gargle, if they make any noise.

Some of them possess no arms, and some that do appear to have long black blades for arms rather than actual limbs. But one characteristic that they all share that Ritsuka picks up on immediately is their lack of eyes, or even eye sockets.

"Master, requesting rapid self-assessment of personal combat abilities," Jeannie asks quietly as ever but quickly, slowly turning around to put her back to her Master and face these shadowy figures that have as much friendly intent as a Super Chimera.

"I'm not very good," Ritsuka responds immediately. "From a strictly magical sense, there's not much I can do. My strength as a Master lies in my ability to maintain and command multiple Servants at once."

"Copy your last, this unit shall engage in primary aggressive action. All contacts in our immediate vicinity are declared hostile."

And as such, the shadowy enemies start to screech and gargle more loudly than before, the noises they make grating against Ritsuka's eardrums. She didn't know that some of these noises that are being made were even possible...not that she had any desire to find out. Pretty much as soon as they spawn in, the misshapen figures begin to charge at them en masse, continuing to scream their heavily distorted and warped battle cries.

"Initiating combat."

When Ritsuka looks back down at Jeannie, she's already face-to-face with the first enemy that she can reach.

Pulling her small right fist back, Jeannie ducks low, turns her body to her right, and swings her hips back to drive her knuckles into the gut of the first enemy.

The smoky figure gets instantly launched into the air, soaring like a bullet over the treeline of the medium-sized trees in the area. Ritsuka can't help but gawk at the disappearing sight of that first bad guy zoom out of sight into the distance.

Jeannie clearly thinks nothing of it as she catches a blade thrust from a second enemy with her bare hands and quickly pivots on her feet to smash him into the snow behind her with such force that black blood splatters everywhere, as if the enemy has fallen down from the sky from a high altitude. Using the same force to snap off the blade at his elbow, Jeannie turns around again and flicks it like she's throwing a Frisbee, and she flicks it so hard that the ripped blade swiftly decapitates another enemy approaching her.

Despite the two speedy kills, the rest of the thirty-something hostiles are drawing close, and it's going to be dangerous for Jeannie if she continues to engage them one by one. Recognizing this, Jeannie leaps up high into the air, clearing a good twenty meters or so. While nearing the apex of her super jump, what appears to be a large black sword the size of a medieval claymore appears parallel to her right arm, and when she reaches the top of her jump trajectory, Jeannie throws her arm downwards, not bothering to grab it because the handle of the monstrous sword is just too big for her tiny hands to take hold of properly.

The black sword flies down to the ground, so fast in fact that the enemy she throws it at has absolutely no chance of dodging it and subsequently gets split in half from the head down to the pelvis. But the carnage doesn't stop there: when the sword makes contact with the ground, punching through the snow to do so, the nearest nine shadowy figures also spontaneously implode because more black swords that look like downscaled versions of the huge one that Jeannie just threw down erupt out of their bodies seemingly at random: the head, chest, abdomen, thighs, the blades are indiscriminate in where they come out from.

The swords that explode out of the nearby hostiles don't even hit the ground when Jeannie makes her next move, which is to summon another huge sword, plant her feet against one of its flat sides, and fling it down too, slingshotting herself straight back down into the ground to reach it more quickly. As a result, she flattens yet another enemy in her wake by planting the heel of her right shoe into a disfigured enemy's face, effectively punching a hole through his skull while her sword severs about 70% of his torso horizontally.

Thanks to her earlier attack that has cleared her landing zone, Jeannie uses the time she's bought herself to grab the first huge claymore with telekinesis, wrench it out of the snow in which it's embedded itself, and hurling it straight forward, horizontally again, so that the claymore can rip everything in its path in half before skidding across the snow and coming to a violent halt at the base of a big, cold tree in the distance.

Jeannie then stomps the ground with her left foot this time, and all of the smaller blades that have been produced as a result of the imploding enemies from earlier immediately rise into the air, snap into position to lock themselves onto the nearest enemies they can track, and promptly zip towards them.

Ritsuka watches silently as almost every single remaining shadowy foe gets pierced and shredded, oftentimes more times than necessary, by the storm of blades that showers down on them. Instead of having normal red blood, these creatures appear to have black blood, and so a collective torrent of black blood splashes into the air before landing on the snow as the blades devastate the field.

And Jeannie simply stands still as her blades do the rest of the work for her. Even as the blood flies and the air is filled with nothing but the dreadful, hair-raising screams of the dying creatures and the tearing of rotten flesh, Jeannie simply wipes a bit of splashed black blood off her right cheek with the back of her hand. It's not the only blood that she'll need to wipe off: her metallic white hair and her clothes are draped with blood, though it's obviously not as noticeable on her dress.

Once the blades settle, there remain only two more enemies who are still moving. One of them has been lucky enough to not get targeted by the homing blades, and so he proceeds to make his move and charges at Jeannie, shrieking like usual as if he doesn't understand that one little girl has just decimated the rest of his kind here. The other one has had a blade sink into his stomach, which has severed his spine, rendering him unable to walk, so he's in the middle of crawling towards Jeannie, pathetically waving his bladed arm around.

Ritsuka's newest Servant turns to her more pressing threat first as he makes his last stand, but she does nothing at first, letting him close the gap between them, so the enemy lunges at her, swinging his bladed arm downwards to cut Jeannie's face in half.

She just sidesteps it calmly so the enemy's swing misses almost comically – Ritsuka can tell right away that these enemies don't exactly have a coherent grasp of actual combat finesse. As the shadowy figure stumbles forward from its lunge, Jeannie catches his face as he passes, and with seemingly no effort, she pushes his head forward – and tears it off his neck. The now headless figure pitifully slaps the snow at his feet like a ragdoll with its strings cut, and the head that Jeannie holds gapes at her silently, trying to continue shrieking at her for the rest of its now very short life but lacking the lungs to do so. Jeannie holds the head until its jaws cease moving, and only then does she toss it aside before walking over to the final survivor.

His ability to walk robbed, the final lone shadowy figure is still crawling as best he can towards Jeannie, brandishing his bladed arm at her. Jeannie swiftly steps on his elbow where the blade protrudes out of his arm messily so that he can't swing it around, steps on his back to keep him still, and reaches down to grab hold of the base of his arm, near his shoulder. With a quick tug, she pulls his right arm off its shoulder joint and discards it in favor of pulling the shadowy enemy up off the ground, still with the blade stuck in his torso. She's so small that the figure's legs drag helplessly against the snow when she lifts him up.

Just as Ritsuka wonders what she's going to end up doing to him, three blades brutally pop out of his body at the left shoulder and hips. Another set of three blades follows, and then another, then another, until the three remaining limbs are torn off from the inside out from the sheer number of blades being produced.

The head of the monster is writhing and screaming bloody murder at the top of his lungs at the pain of having all of his limbs torn off. Once the limbs are detached, Jeannie firmly puts her hand on his face – and a moment later, one final sword stabs out of the back of his head. Jeannie waits until the muscle spasms she feels through her hand cease, then relinquishes the body, which plops down against the bloodied snow at her feet.

"Area secure; all hostile contacts eliminated," Jeannie reports, turning around to face her Master to indicate that the danger has been dealt with. "Proceeding to Alpha Station."


	3. Communication

"...what were those things...?"

It's been about another five minutes since Ritsuka and Jeannie have departed the scene of the carnage, at Jeannie's urging, of course. Ritsuka has waited a little bit to ask this question, for the sight of seeing her new mysterious Servant in action has left a deep first impression on her, to say the least.

"Identity of hostiles unknown. Jeannie has encountered them numerous times before Master's arrival," Jeannie answers crisply. "Closest approximate: ghouls."

"Ghouls..." Ritsuka grimaces somewhat. "Honestly, they reminded me of...zombies."

"Zombies," Jeannie repeats slowly, still walking ahead of her newfound Master.

"Yeah. Do you know what those are? Or...?"

Jeannie pauses, then responds with, "Conducting syntax search in main database for main query: 'Zombies'. Relevant searches found: 0. New entry required for query completion."

"Er..." Ritsuka isn't familiar with all this computer-speak that Jeannie formulates her speech with half the time, and part of her is starting to wish that she took a few basic pointers from Da Vinci or some of the Chaldea staff who're good with computers. "Can you, uh, say that...normally?"

"Jeannie is not familiar with the term 'zombies'. An explanation would be appreciated."

"Oh, just that..." Ritsuka sighs - at least that's easy enough to understand. "Right. Zombies are...well, they're like...they're basically human beings who get infected with some kinda weird virus or disease that kills them and then turns them undead, so their corpses move around after death. I know they exist, but so far the closest I've gotten to seeing an actual one were like the skeletons that we've run into sometimes...I've only really seen them in movies that we sometimes watch back in Chaldea during our Friday night movie nights..."

Silence is returned from Jeannie's end as she processes this information thoroughly...the relevant bits, anyway. "New entry logged and saved for syntax query 'zombies'," she murmurs. "However, the enemies we encountered six and a half minutes ago...do not exactly match your description of zombies."

"Oh...so they're something else..."

"Affirmative. Master's description of 'zombies' implies a biological cause for their condition. It also implies a pre-existing human population...of which there is none."

That last part sends a few subtle chills down Ritsuka's spine.

"Analysis enemy unknowns indicates fabrication...manufacture. Limbs and flesh modified surgically and genetically...weapons, if available, applied haphazardly..." Jeannie continues quietly, almost ominously. "AAR also indicates similar diagnostics...contact with lethal force yielded reduced flesh resistance and easier dismemberment. Data does not match with human data."

"So someone's producing them?" Ritsuka asks, trying her best to follow along with Jeannie's oftentimes mechanically difficult trains of thought.

"High possibility."

"Then...then what about you, Jeannie-chan? Oh, is it..." Ritsuka hesitates, having blurted out the "-chan" at the end on accident. "...is it alright if I call you that?"

Jeannie nods without even breaking her small stride or looking back.

"Then...yeah, what about you? You're...you're a...Saber...?"

Upon the mention of the word Saber, two black swords appear without warning on either side of Jeannie, hanging where they appear and pointing downwards at the snowy ground while keeping pace with their creator. This allows Ritsuka to get a good look at them, since she's merely a few feet behind them: they are quite simple swords upon first glance, but the longer Ritsuka observes these swords, the more she gets the feeling that these aren't quite like the swords she's seen her other Saber Servants back in Chaldea wield.

The blades are composed of pure metal, and they feature no other material. The hilt, handle, and of course, the blade are all constructed with cold black steel which bare red inlets that run the lengths of the blades, from point to hilt. These red inlets glow very faintly, as if smoldering like the dying embers of a cooling magma flow. The blades themselves are slender but rigid, and their shade of black is such that Ritsuka feels like she's being mentally sucked into the swords if she stares directly at them for too long, like they harness the power of black holes. But by doing so anyway, she notices that both of the blades have a set of subtly glowing and tiny numbers etched carefully into one side of the blades, which read:

**_100111100_**

"Blacklight Fracture System currently installed as primary weapons system," Jeannie explains. "Network of custom-built blades capable of fracture-spawning additional blades inside the bodies of hostile entities by consuming their internal mana or energy supplies."

Upon hearing this professionally morbid description, Ritsuka flashbacks to the sight of the masses of black blades exploding out of Jeannie's victims from barely over eight minutes ago.

"Blacklights are synchronized with this unit to achieve a degree of control normally impossible to acquire via physical means," Jeannie continues. "Blade wielders traditionally use a single blade, but a proficient few have been known to use two, be it historical or mythical. And if humans evolve to gain an additional pair of arms, eventually techniques involving quad-wielding will emerge. With Blacklight Fracture, evolution is not needed, and the number of blades wielded by a user is limited only by its own mental processing power."

As usual, Ritsuka takes a moment to process Jeannie's own words. "So...you can theoretically use any number of swords, as long as you're synchronized with them...?"

"Affirmative."

"So you know how to use a sword normally, too."

"Affirmative. However, due to this unit's undersized chassis, physical manipulation is suboptimal; mental manipulation is instead the preferred method of utilization."

"Undersized..." Ritsuka, glancing again at Jeannie, sees the height difference between her new Servant and the blades that she uses - the Blacklight swords are noticeably taller than she is. "But you're strong, right? If you wanted to, you could use it yourself?"

"Repeat: suboptimal performance. Physical strength eliminated as possible cause. Alternate cause: inefficient energy expenditure. Small size of currently applied chassis disadvantaged due to relative size of Blacklight weaponry - unnecessary energy reserves will be dedicated to overcoming physical limitations of manual wielding."

"Er, Japanese, please, Jeannie-chan."

So Jeannie stops and pivots to face her Master in order to deliver her explanation in a less robotic manner; Ritsuka swears by peering back down at Jeannie that she can see a slight glint of annoyance in Jeannie's facial expression, but it could just be the way her bangs drape slightly over her closed eyes.

"This subject is indeed capable of using these blades by hand. However, due to this subject's size and the relative size of these blades, it is inefficient for this subject to do so. The physics involved in making such a feat happen dictate that eventually, too much energy will be used to maintain this attacking behavior, which in turn burns mana, as opposed to simply using mana as a tool to control these blades."

Jeannie waits, as though waiting for Ritsuka to come up with something else to ask, which she most certainly does.

"But...some of my Sabers aren't that big either. Artoria, for example..." Ritsuka ponders with a hand over her lips. "She's not big compared to the others, but she still swings Excalibur around like she could chop Chaldea in half...actually, she probably could."

"Servants normally possess large reserves of mana, which they maintain via their contracts with their respective Masters. Sabers also typically possess intricate knowledge of swordsmanship and have trained extensively to use their weapons as they do in as many imaginable combat scenarios as possible."

"...then what about you, Jeannie-chan?"

"This unit possesses very little mana. Therefore, acquisition of a Master who can assist in mana circulation was paramount. Even after acquiring you as Master, mana conservation and efficiency is also paramount to this unit's sustained activity."

Very little mana? Ritsuka again has flashbacks of Jeannie leaping up into the sky and plowing through a snowy field's worth of zombies, or zombie-like creature things or whatever. If that's what she considers "very little mana", what is she going to do with a bit more mana?

Taking Ritsuka's silence for now as a sign to keep going, Jeannie turns forward and continues to walk, and her Master follows suit, but it's not long before she comes up with another question.

"Another thing's been bothering me, but...your eyes, are they, um...are you b...blind...?"

"Affirmative. This unit's ocular implants have malfunctioned; visual capability is rendered null."

"Y-You've...you fought those guys completely blind...?" Ritsuka can't help but scratch her head. "But...you fought them like you could see them all. And just now, uh, right now, even, you're acting like this is totally normal, like you can see everything that's going on."

"Jeannie has disabled all ocular processes and rerouted that processing power to alternate sensory processes instead. Auditory perception, tactile perception, olfactory perception, sometimes gustatory perception, magical perception, and emotional perception. Using various combinations of these alternate perceptions, vision can be regained in an alternative method."

The Saber (?) Servant pauses, and her feet do the same for that short moment.

"...to an extent," she finally adds before resuming her walk.

"But...you make it sound like you decided to become blind, rather than, uh, something happening to you that made you go blind," Ritsuka points out. "Did you actually...make yourself blind, or is there...more to it?"

"Missing memory files; unable to retrieve necessary memory files to provide adequate result. This unit does not know the cause of blindness."

Her Master nods slowly in acknowledgement. "...I'm sorry about that. Your, uh...blindness. It's amazing that you've been able to fight like this for...however long that you have been."

"Apology not required for interaction with this unit. As you have been able to tell by now, Master, this subject is to be perceived as a humanized central processing unit. Conventional human variables such as emotions and sentimentality are not prioritized. Do you know of anyone who possesses cybernetic implants or prosthetics as a human?"

Cybernetic implants or prosthetics? Ritsuka starts to think, but then quickly realizes that she doesn't have to rack her brains too hard.

"Yeah, Da Vinci. She's a Servant, but I guess that'll have to count as human for now. She has a robotic arm, I think. No wait, actually, it might just be a really big gauntlet. She could snap her fingers with that thing and half the room would turn into dust or something..."

"This unit is the inverse of that Servant," Jeannie explains. "Servant Da Vinci is a human possessing mechanized instruments. Jeannie is a weaponized computer possessing a human body chassis which houses her central processing unit."

"So exact opposites, huh...we have another Servant like that back in Chaldea. Babbage-san, Charles Babbage. I was able to summon him, but he showed up as a big giant robot. He can also transform into other stuff if we reconfigure him, which is really cool. Fran-chan had to yell at Moriarty-san to stop messing with Babbage-san's transformation sequences so much."

Jeannie doesn't show any reaction to this, like she didn't hear any of it, but Ritsuka quietly assumes that this is because Jeannie considers her little story about her Servants to be largely useless information. Since Jeannie herself has already explained that she's supposed to be a computer, or at least behave like one, it would make sense that she'd show no interest in stuff that she doesn't think is vital to her mission profile, or whatever she's trying to do.

"But you really have no idea who you are? Or how you became a Servant?" Ritsuka asks. Although listening to Jeannie is sometimes a bit difficult due to her techspeak, the crispness and punctual responses that Jeannie gives makes talking with her feel somehow...satisfying. Perhaps after all these months of living and fighting with her usual crew of Servants in Chaldea and across the Singularities, of whom there are plenty of eclectic and eccentric personalities with whom talking may not always be the best course of action, meeting a Servant like Jeannie who can carry a levelheaded conversation without having to also deal with random quirky shenanigans at the same time is rather refreshing.

Jeannie shakes her head. "This subject believes that the data centers contain recoverable data that may provide information that must be gathered in order to understand Silva Gelida and the situation involving it. And perhaps information relevant to this subject."

"And what's the situation so far, do you think?"

"Mission-vital information amounts critically low; adequate combat report cannot be drafted at this time. However, this unit can divulge what little pieces of information have been gathered so far." The Blacklight blades behind Jeannie's shoulderblades disintegrate swiftly into black dust that appears to simply evaporate into thin air, like wisps of mana being dispersed into the chilly, soft winds draping all around them in the snowy forest. "The presence of active hostiles suggests that our own presence in the Silva Gelida is not welcome; therefore, my mission profile actively contradicts theirs and the present situation at hand. The summoning of a Master in order to assist in the successful execution of the current mission profile also suggests that the situation is potentially larger than expected. Lastly, the fact that this unit is operating with limited mental capacity in terms of information and self-identification implies that the situation is far more compromised than may be expected."

As ominous as Jeannie's words sound, Ritsuka can't help but get thriller movie vibes, like she's physically inside a sci-fi thriller. Maybe she and her Servants shouldn't have so many movie nights on Fridays.

"Then when we reach this first data center, we'll hopefully get the answers we want," Ritsuka summarizes concisely. "Or, some of them, at least."

"Emphasis on 'hopefully'," Jeannie adds, and her voice drops a considerable degree to match this.

"Uh oh, that doesn't sound good."

"Affirmative. Given this unit's lack of situational information, the data centers may be in any state upon our arrival, anywhere from nominal operational status to FUBAR."

FUBAR? Jeannie speaks this word in English, which throws Ritsuka off guard for a bit.

"What's 'FUBAR'?" the Master asks innocently.

"An American contraction that apparently stands for 'fucked up beyond all recognition', or in simpler terms, total loss."

"Oh. Um, good to know. I...think."

"Master displayed an adequate grasp of the English language, so Jeannie authorized this brief usage of English. If you wish, this unit may execute a language filter to prohibit usage of any foreign vocabulary henceforth."

"Er, you don't need to go _that _far..."


	4. Objective Alpha

Snow continues to lightly flutter down into the clearing where Jeannie has found Ritsuka and established a contract together, at the small rock that is now slowly gaining a fresh coat of snow over it. The footprints that Ritsuka and Jeannie have left in their wake are still visible, though only about half as much as before due to the steadily falling snow.

But more footprints are being made, and this time with their sounds to go with them in the form of soft thumps. And before long, these soft footsteps against the snow are themselves accompanied by a pair of voices.

"Yeah, looks like we were too late. God-_fuckin_'-damn it, I told you we wouldn't get here in time."

"That's the thing, we weren't _meant _to get here in time. She was going to beat us here no matter what we'd tried. That's the fourth time I'm telling you this."

"You're keeping _count? _How pathetic can you get?"

"Says the one whining to me about how we couldn't get to this place in time when we already _knew _what would happen. Then what, do you want to follow their tracks? They're still fresh. Well, kind of...?"

"What kinda fresh tracks do you think these are? Outta your goddamn mind."

"Just answer the question, do we go or not?"

"We _could_, but by now she'd'a made a contract..."

"Not that that's going to stop us. But no, I think..."

"You're thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?"

"Naturally. It might be better that things turned out this way."

"Hell yeah. Now, the question _is_, how long's it gonna take? I'd rather not just sit around all fuckin' day, that's for sure."

"Now that she has a Master with her supplying her with mana, we shouldn't have long to wait. What _we _need to do in the meantime, though..."

"Should be simple, right? C'mon."

The voices depart as soon as they've arrived. Two pairs of fresh footsteps are left, pointing in the same direction as the old pair of footsteps before them.

* * *

"Alpha Station sighted. Distance: 250 meters."

After a rather lengthy walk that Ritsuka is by now quite used to taking, she and her new Servant are able to lay their eyes upon their first objective: a densely forested bottom of a very tall cliffside. Given that the snowy forest was becoming denser and denser as they walked, the amount of winter vegetation here is not surprising, though it's the first time Ritsuka has seen evergreen trees in such quantity.

Jeannie stops at the edge of the snowy path to take a knee and observe the data center, or more accurately what's probably the entrance into it, from afar. Upon catching up to her shortly, Ritsuka sees that Jeannie's knelt down right before a bit of a cliffside herself, indicating that the data center they're looking for is situated in a bit of a valley or grotto. And following Jeannie's gaze, she can see that there's a bit of a clearing in front of one section of the bottom of the cliffside, even though the cliffside itself doesn't immediately seem to show any signs of possible entry. The clearing itself is cluttered somewhat with the usual rocks, foliage, and of course, snow, though unusually, there isn't as much snow there as there is all around them. It's to the point where Ritsuka can see some of the ground underneath the snow.

"So...this is the place?" Ritsuka asks uncertainly, in case there's something more to this data center than meets the eye.

"Affirmative," Jeannie replies even more quietly than before. She raises her right hand out, pressing her middle finger and thumb together in a preparatory snapping motion, and then snaps. The sheer strength put into this snap causes Ritsuka to jump terribly - she didn't think such a loud snap was possible, but she manages to hold her voice to let Jeannie do whatever she's doing. A few moments later, Jeannie stands back up.

"Scanned for threats, none detected. However, high possibility of encountering hostile contacts upon entry."

"More of those, uh, zombie guys?" Ritsuka asks, her voice a bit shaky after getting spooked by her Servant's snap.

Jeannie nods. Pulling her right foot behind her left, she raises her left hand slightly, bending her elbow at an imperfect right angle, and Ritsuka watches as a peculiar steel contraption nestles into her small hand. And without warning, and more frighteningly with only pair of mere clicks, two long, curved metal arcs snap forward in place to complete the image of a wicked bow, tainted in the same colors as Jeannie's Blacklight blades. Speaking of her blades, Jeannie nocks one of her Blacklights that Ritsuka didn't even notice she had out already, and a black bowstring that's probably constructed with mana connects the bottom of the blade's hilt to the mechanized bow so that it can be ready to fire.

As Jeannie nocks her first "arrow" and pulls it back with the correct amount of strength, the Blacklight sword's red jolts that stretch up and down the length of its blade and hilt like straight fault lines in the earth glow strongly, as if Jeannie is infusing it with more mana than usual by mounting it in her bow. But even as the glow gets stronger and more sinister, the brightness of the red light emitting from the blade does not give off an overpowering aura, merely the impression that the sword is now quietly powered up, somehow.

Again without any warning, Jeannie releases her powered arrow. The release is almost completely silent; the friction between the bowstring and Jeannie's fingers upon release was louder than the arrow actually leaving the bow due to the blade's free-floating nature while nocked.

When Ritsuka tries to follow the arrow with her eyes, she loses track of the arrow for a moment - only to realize that she never saw the arrow actually travel anywhere because it simply disappeared as soon as it left the bow. After lowering her razor-sharp mechanical bow, Jeannie points in the direction of the grotto before them, and following her finger, Ritsuka can barely make out the black projectile embedded into the snow and dirt in the distance.

But as the two of them keep watching, shortly after the arrow has landed, around it spawn more piles of black, dusty auras that sift away to reveal more of the same zombie-like enemies from before, who promptly begin to shamble about aimlessly, wandering around in front of the bottom of the cliffside.

"How did you know that there'd be enemies there...?" Ritsuka asks quietly, just in case the zombies' hearing is good enough to detect her voice even from this far away.

"Projectile unintended for strictly reconnaissance purposes," Jeannie explains, then shifts her pointing finger upwards. "Main purpose intended as a decoy shot."

Following her Servant's finger again, the Chaldean Master angles her vision much higher to follow the giant cliffside up. Sitting at the top, towering over the cliffside even more, are a trio of colossal black towers equipped with what are very likely to be massive cannons mounted on them. All of the cannons appear to be pointed downwards, as if down at the grotto into which Jeannie has fired her "arrow".

"W-What are those...? I didn't even notice them, they're so high up..." Ritsuka whispers, trembling slightly. The more she looks at these towers, the more she gets the nauseating feeling that if Jeannie hadn't spotted them first, the two of them could've been blasted to bits in no more than a few moments.

Jeannie squints her eyes back up at the tower cannons too. "Identity of towers unidentified. However, no energy spikes detected. Cannons appear to be offline."

"So many things we don't know about..." Ritsuka sighs heavily. "I hope this data center can tell us at least some things we'd like to know."

"Affirmative. Mission intel is vital, and having more of it is better than having less."

Jeannie then raises her Torque Bow back up and pulls back the magic black bowstring again. But this time, curiously, she doesn't load another Blacklight arrow.

"...um, Jeannie-chan? There's...you don't have a - "

Just as Ritsuka tries to point this seemingly obvious problem to her Servant, Jeannie releases the bowstring. Instantly, Ritsuka hears a familiar splatter of what can only be tearing flesh and flying blood, and she turns to the scene of the crime to find one of the shambling zombies in the middle of toppling forwards with the top half of its body ripped apart by a dozen smaller Blacklight blades. Jeannie silently and calmly repeats this process as many times as she needs to until all the zombies that they can see from their lookout cliff are put down with bone-crushingly violent retribution.

"Enemy foot-mobiles eliminated, one disabled," Ritsuka's new Archer Servant reports with little more than a whisper. "Continuing with the objective. Come, Master."

Ritsuka says not a word as she follows Jeannie down the cliff that they're on - the drop down is not too far, but Ritsuka does take some time carefully making her way down their own cliff safely while Jeannie effortlessly hops her way down, still carrying her Torque Bow in her small right hand, though she does pause between each jump so that she's within reaching distance of Ritsuka in case something happens to her while she descends. They both reach the small grotto safely and proceed to the clearing where Jeannie has slain all of their enemies before they even needed to face them head-on, and by the time they reach the killzone, both the zombie bodies and Jeannie's Blacklights have disappeared, with only some misshapen outlines of snow on the ground serving as subtle evidence of any fight that took place here.

A lone, somewhat squirming zombie missing the lower half of its body who has failed to die upon getting hit by one of Jeannie's attacks from a little while ago gargles pathetically at them as the two girls approach, so Jeannie reaches it first, places the lower arm of her Torque Bow behind the neck of the dismembered zombie, raises her right shoe, and swiftly stomps her foot against the zombie's face, simultaneously decapitating it with the alarming swiftness of a guillotine and caving its face in with her soles.

"All enemies removed," Jeannie murmurs, stepping past the now-still zombie as if she'd done nothing more than toss a piece of trash into a garbage bin where it belongs.

Reaching the clearing now, Ritsuka notices Jeannie's gait slowing considerably as they walk through the light, broken layers of snow approaching the base of the opposing cliffside, so she matches hers to follow, and soon, Jeannie stops outright. The two of them simply stand there, in the middle of the clearing, and Ritsuka, wanting to ask her new Servant what's wrong, makes the difficult decision to keep her mouth shut so that Jeannie can keep doing whatever she's doing.

Ritsuka's patience pays off, and about a minute of silence later, Jeannie says,

"...drastic anomalies detected."

Chills grip Ritsuka's spine again. Is it because of Jeannie's small, robotic voice and the jarring contrast that it gives off because it's the voice of a little girl speaking as if she were a deadly computer, or is it because of the fact that she can't sense anything magical at all in this area? This whole place, this Silva Gelida place, has been more or less bereft of magic ambience ever since she got here, but it feels even emptier now in this clearing. Having been in Singularities where magic hangs thick and heavy in the air, being shoved into one where there seems to be no magic whatsoever is such a harsh reversal that Ritsuka feels she may be having trouble adjusting, and therefore her senses may be getting impacted quite negatively.

As she issues this grave warning, Jeannie's Torque Bow disappears from sight. She turns around with a large Blacklight sword in her hands, which she holds out in front of her new Master vertically for a moment before letting go. The sword floats on its own for a second or two, then starts to slowly revolve around Ritsuka.

"Additional defensive countermeasure. Prioritizes your safety," Jeannie explains, turning back to face the base of the cliffside again. "Likelihood of enemy ambush extremely high. Proceed with extreme caution. Watch your corners, and watch your flanks. If you observe anything irregular, inform this unit immediately."

"O-Okay," Ritsuka gulps, feeling her heartbeat up in her throat.

With her brief but crisp instructions set, Jeannie then briskly steps towards the side of the cliff. After gazing at a certain section of it for a few moments, she places her hand against the rock in a seemingly random position. But from afar, as soon as Jeannie places her hand against the cliff, Ritsuka can hear a small, somewhat scratchy little jingle, an electronic sampling that a cliffside like this doesn't tend to produce under ordinary circumstances.

Then, a sizeable section of the rock before them begins to pull itself apart, revealing a set of sliding doors disguised by the outer layer of rock. But as the doors pull further and further apart, Ritsuka is suddenly hit with a wave of chokingly noxious air that is escaping the facility from within, now that Jeannie has opened the doors, though perhaps not surprisingly, Jeannie herself displays no such reaction.

Once Ritsuka finishes coughing and holds her hands over her mouth as if that'll stop her from breathing in the nauseating air coming from beyond the doors, she can get a glimpse of what's produced these toxic vapors. Human skeletons have spilled out onto the ground, having been piled up against the doors before Jeannie opened them, and they all wear dirty, horribly blemished and stained business suits and lab coats or a combination of the two. At least they're ordinary human skeletons, but with the way that they've spilled out, including some skeletons whose skulls pop off their necks due to how brittle their bones have become, forces Ritsuka to avert her eyes for a bit. It's not that she hasn't seen gruesome sights like this before, but perhaps she'll never get fully used to seeing stuff like this.

And when the Master steels herself to look past the pile of clothed bones to gaze further into this facility of death, it doesn't get any better: more clothed skeletons resting in all kinds of various contorted shapes and positions occupy the seats, floors, tables, and desks inside, or wherever the light from the outside can reach. Massive stains, colored horridly and strewn everywhere without discrimination, paint the walls, desktops, and floors, and worse, quite a few of these stains seem to originate from particular skeletons that lie nearby. And other than the light from the forest seeping in, it is pitch dark in the deep bowels of this data center, which doesn't help matters very much.

Jeannie takes one step into the facility before stopping and giving Ritsuka an urging glance.

"Master, requesting compliance. Follow this unit."

Ritsuka groans weakly. Hopefully they don't have to stay long in this already dreadful place...


	5. Demon Within

Producing a set of six Blacklight swords of her own that hover over her shoulders pointing forward, Jeannie calmly but carefully steps over the spilled skeletons and enters the dark, rancid data center. Left with no choice but to follow, Ritsuka grits her teeth and follows suit.

As expected, the air inside is dank, musty, and vomit-inducing; had Ritsuka not traveled to many Singularities and experienced rough conditions beforehand, she feels that she would have thrown up outside on the spot, as soon as she got hit by the terrible odors that escaped once Jeannie opened up the main doors. Any greenie would've reacted as such, but then again, just because she managed to successfully fistfight Goetia in his human state doesn't mean she's prepared to plunge headlong into a facility that's been filled with dead bodies for God knows how long...those two things are just too different, after all.

Even so, Ritsuka can't help but let her eyes fixate themselves on each skeleton that she and Jeannie walk by. Most, if not all, of the bodies they find are wearing the same lab coat and business suit combo, or some variant of it, so she can only imagine that this must have been a laboratory of some kind. She starts getting Seraph vibes once she reaches this conclusion, but even in Seraph, even while Kiara was indeed terrifying in who she was and what she did, at the very least she herself and Seraph's plane of existence were easy on the eyes, with a few exceptions, of course. Here, the only thing easy on the eyes is the Servant walking before her, and nothing else has the decency to provide the same courtesy...and accidentally stepping in some disgusting mulch which can only be the ages-old solidified contents of a nearby skeleton's stomach cements this feeling.

"E-Ew..." Ritsuka whispers under her breath, shuddering as she quickly steps away. She weakly glares at the nearby skeleton responsible for making the rancid mess that she's stepped in, but the skeleton can only offer so much in terms of an apology.

The first area that they have entered from the outside appears to be a computer workstation area: lots of old and dusty computers with their flatscreen monitors still sit on the desks that occupy the majority of this room. A few of the monitors and one of the computer towers have been knocked to the ground, and given the positions of a few skeletons around them and their relative proximity to the edges of some of the desks, it's not hard to assume that some of the electronics were knocked over when people crashed into them for one reason or another.

"...something happened here, didn't it, Jeannie-chan...?" Ritsuka mumbles tensely, looking back at the pile of skeletons that are scattered in the main doorway behind them. "Something that caused all these people to try to escape, but...but..."

"...they could not," Jeannie finishes for her Master. "Exit procedure denied."

Passing by a small room in the corner with a closed door, they continue venturing slowly further into the facility, exiting the initial information processing area to enter a connecting cross-shaped hallway that they access via a heavy security door that is already open for them when they discover it. By this point they are deep enough in the dark and death-filled facility that the only light that they have is the sinister red lights glowing softly from Jeannie's floating black swords, and Ritsuka can only thank her lucky stars that the owner of these nightmarish blades is on her side and not on the opposite end of the dark hallway. She can only imagine what _that _must be like...

Jeannie halts deliberately in the middle of the connecting corridors, with Ritsuka mimicking her. The latter wishes she could ask Jeannie if she has a way to cast a brighter light so that she can see what they're getting themselves into better, but she's scared that this will distract Jeannie from doing whatever it is that she's doing. At least they don't have to wait in the middle of the darkness for too long, for Jeannie turns to her left and starts walking down the left corridor, and Ritsuka sticks close behind her as instructed. It's not a long walk, thankfully, but Ritsuka realizes that this is because the corridor is a dead end. Well, kind of - Jeannie reaches up with her small, fragile hand to place it in front of what appears to be a very dusty biometric scanner.

Amazingly, the scanner illuminates itself with a faint blue light when Jeannie interacts with it, and the blue light turns green with confirmation to open up a door in front of her.

What Jeannie sees behind the door makes her take a full step back and her eyes widen sharply in shock.

The word "ERROR" in deep red English letters fills the void that is behind this door. Not a single word, but dozens, hundreds, thousands, _millions_. And interspersed among them are the letters X, Y, and Z, with more dozens and hundreds of them dumped haphazardly into the mass of ERROR's like it's a Cubist painting converted into the digital age. And like television static, the mass of digital letters pulse, glow, and fidget incessantly like millions of insects infesting whatever ungodly realm that this door has just revealed.

Jeannie simply closes the door promptly and leaves, walking back the way from whence they've come, and the only reason why Ritsuka manages to get a move on is because she's more terrified of what might happen to her in this sort of place if she were to keep standing still, especially in front of a door that's housing something like that.

They do the same with the other end of the corridor, which turns out to be a mirror copy of the previous one: another door controlled by a biometric scanner that reveals a void filled with nothing but ERROR's and X's, Y's, and Z's, so the only way forward, it seems, is straight ahead. As they walk, Ritsuka also can't help but notice that these hallways are impeccably clean, a horrid contrast to the room that they came in from. Why?

After a brief walk, they find the door leading into the next area, which, perhaps suspiciously again, is already open for them. Jeannie doesn't hesitate and quietly steps inside, even though Ritsuka's own guts is screaming at the two of them not to.

It's hard to tell what this new room is due to the lack of light, so Ritsuka sticks close behind her Servant as usual. Jeannie walks up to what looks like a storage canister lying on top of a laboratory table of sorts and interacts with a small screen extended out from the right side of the canister. The screen lights up weakly, but it scrolls slowly with some programming language as part of its boot-up sequence.

"Um, Jeannie-chan? Is there a way to have some light in here...?" Ritsuka whispers, unable to stand this stifling darkness for much longer.

The Blacklight sword that Jeannie has assigned to her Master responds instead, swiveling around slowly and intensifying its own red light to channel it like a vertically shaped flare, revolving slowly so that Ritsuka can get a good look at everything that's around them. It's not the best light quality, but compared to near-total darkness, it's more than enough.

Ritsuka finds the two of them occupying a terrifyingly large room. It's not the size of it that scares her so, but the fact that she had absolutely no idea that the two of them just entered a room this big. It's about the size of an indoor gymnasium, and they're standing in front of a huge metal pillar that extends all the way up to the ceiling, which must be at least twenty plus meters high. The tall pillar, made out of black metal, gray metal sheets, and white wiring that drapes its sides in all four cardinal directions, is partitioned into three sections: the base, a middle glass area or something where the walls are transparent, and the top.

Taking a closer look at what's probably the middle glass section of the wide pillar, Ritsuka can see that a good portion of it facing them is broken in, which explains the glass shards she was stepping on just now. With the quality of the light that she has from her Blacklight, it's difficult to ascertain just how much of it is broken and how much of it is still intact.

Scanning the rest of the room around them, Ritsuka finds that the large storage canister that she and Jeannie have walked up to is not the only one of its kind: nine more are positioned perfectly in a circle around the huge pillar, but it appears that a large metal appendage is connecting the pillar to the canister table that Jeannie is currently accessing. Large display monitors are hung in, again, a circular formation around the pillar, angled downwards so that it's easy for people walking into the large room to see what's on them by simply raising their heads, should they be turned on.

The room itself is shaped like a dome, almost like an arena, but old computer terminals dot the room around the large central pillar in quadrants, each terminal facing the wall at the easiest angle and all of which hooked up to the central pillar with sizeable black coils covered with black metal plates. Ordinary computer workstations, similar to the ones they'd seen in the first room upon entering the facility, sit against the circular wall around them, essentially lining the entire circumference. Several old carts, a few of them still with computer equipment and other electronics sitting in their trays, either loiter about miserably or lay knocked over on the floor with their contents spilled out before them.

And, of course, bodies. There are only a few clothed skeletons occupying the room with them this time, nowhere near the number in the first room, but still a few nonetheless, all of them laying in the middle of large stains. All of them, Ritsuka notices with morbid curiosity, are in the closer half of the room to the door through which they've entered, and all of them are lying on the floor as if they were crawling towards the door, their bones contorted in different positions.

Nothing more of the room seems particularly noteworthy, so Ritsuka turns around to face Jeannie again, who also faces her at the same time with some good timing as the screen from the canister outputs some last few lines of code before shutting down immediately, like it's exhausted from having put out so much energy.

"Are you done?" Ritsuka asks hopefully, but to her sharp dismay, Jeannie shakes her head.

"Negative, Master. This unit must extract information from all four of the terminals connected to the mainframe," Jeannie explains softly, pointing at the four quadrant terminals placed around them while walking briskly over to the closest one. Ritsuka groans aloud - part of her wants to just go outside and wait for Jeannie finish up her business here in the clearing, but she resists that temptation by deciding that staying near her Servant is the best course of action. The noxious air inside the facility might be supremely uncomfortable, but at least in this room the smell isn't so bad, probably because there's far fewer bodies that've been sitting here for who knows how long. Plus, the smell isn't killing her. Yet.

So Ritsuka waits as patiently as she can for Jeannie to access all four of the mainframe terminals for the information she seeks, sitting down next to each of the terminals as Jeannie slowly proceeds from one to the next. Each terminal plays a small, cheerful jingle that sounds terribly out of place with everything around it before displaying lines of digital text for Jeannie to read, and Ritsuka, unable to either read or comprehend what they're saying, decides that it's probably not worth her time and effort trying to make sense of it all when Jeannie can do that on her own. One of the skeletons in the room with them happens to be lying close by to the third terminal, so Ritsuka spends some time gazing back at the skeleton, wondering what on Earth could have happened in this place to make things here turn out the way they did.

Finally, Jeannie accesses the fourth and final mainframe terminal. Ritsuka is about to go over the side and sit down as per usual, but after the terminal plays its opening jingle, it doesn't immediately start regurgitating lines of code and text at them like the others. Instead, a logo appears: a yin-yang emblem, adorned with a pair of wings, which are animated to flap once before the logo disappears entirely. In its wake, a single browser pops up with what appears to be the still image of a security camera's feed, with a big play button in the center to indicate that this is a video file, so Jeannie plays it.

The color feed displays footage of the room that the two of them are currently in, angled downwards from the ceiling and monitoring the first half of the room from behind the central pillar so that the frontal glass display of the central pillar cannot be seen, since it's only viewable from the front. It's more or less a normal scene in a laboratory: men in lab coats and suits walking about or working at their respective stations, either alone or in pairs or small groups, assisting each other at their stations or standing together in discussion.

Then in just a blink of an eye, chaos begins to ensue. Alarm lights flash ominously, and the scientists start getting up from their workstations to make a break for the main exit door, with a few of the scientists tripping along the way and winding up stampeded by the rest trying to evacuate. Just after the alarms start to go off, what appears to be vents of gas start pouring from and around the ceiling, and the gas being released grows thicker and thicker as the seconds drag on, to the point where whole clouds of gas are being pumped into the room. A few unfortunate scientists, the ones who have stumbled or tripped and consequently got stampeded by their fellow colleagues, can't escape the rapidly expanding gas fumes quickly enough, and Ritsuka watches in silent horror as those unlucky men start coughing violently as they try to make it out of the room, then collapse to the floor in the middle of the room groveling and clutching at either their stomachs or throats as their skins decay and tear themselves from the inside out at frightening speeds. Their convulsions turn into uncontrollable vomiting, which lasts for about a minute before the men finally cease their agonizing convulsions while their skins almost literally melt off their bodies post mortem, dragging liquified blobs of disintegrating muscle down along with them.

All the while that the security feed plays for Ritsuka to watch, Jeannie opens up other windows to browse through the terminal's data caches, which she is still doing by the time the security feed's footage is, for the most part, done. The footage itself continues rolling, but it's just showing more and more gas flooding the room and the same bodies of the men who have died almost instantly when the gas hit them. The footage is still playing by the time Jeannie is done obtaining the information she needs about five minutes later.

"First objective complete. Moving to next phase of mission profile," Jeannie reports to Ritsuka before starting to head for the door. "Exiting initial AO."


	6. Syntax Error

"What happened in there exactly, Jeannie-chan? Do you know? Please tell me that you do now!"

The Master and Servant have since exited the dilapidated data center after the latter has extracted whatever information from the terminals that she's been able to. Ritsuka is supremely relieved to be able to breathe fresh air again - or as fresh as she'll be able to get here - and free from the asphyxiating chokehold of the rotten stench inside the facility that now ranks in the top five most disgusting places she's ever been to. But as much as she's happy to be out, what she's seen while inside she simply can't ignore.

"Data file extraction and analysis complete. Unknown cause released unidentified lethal chemical agent into Data Center Alpha," Jeannie reports, and her voice remains steady - cold, robotic, and factual. "Analysis of human remains within the data center suggests a type of nerve gas; exact strain and chemical composition unknown. Estimated casualties: 63. Survivors: 0."

Ritsuka bites her lower lip a little. It's not quite the answer she's looking for, even if technically the answer she's been given is perfectly adequate...

"I could see that for myself. What I'm asking is if you were able to find out more about that place. _Why_ did that happen? Who flooded the place with gas and killed all those people? And why?"

The more Ritsuka demands information from her Servant, the more she's reminding herself of a certain situation that someone very close to her has been through herself.

"Were they working on something that they shouldn't have been?" Ritsuka asks strongly. "You were the one who wanted to come here for information, right? Does this place have something to do with you?"

"Negative. Extracted data indicates no contextual information about this incident," Jeannie denies coolly. "Master's hypothesis is currently unsupported with currently available intel."

Ritsuka just gawks at her Servant. "...so you really have no idea about what happened here? Why the people here died like this?" she asks as if in disbelief, to which Jeannie shakes her head. "Then what _is_ going on here? Did you at least get what you came here for?"

Jeannie nods at this, at least. "This unit was able to recover several data caches containing random passcode generator programs and an electronic blueprint of the three data centers, which suggests that there is a central generator located somewhere in the Silva Gelida that must be located. Passcode generator programs may be intended for use to reactivate central generator, which may be able to provide the magical energy necessary to stabilize the Silva Gelida and secure extraction for you, Master."

"And you're saying you can access this central generator once we find it?"

"Likely. Master's probability of success in accessing mission-vital structures and devices: 0%. Using process of elimination, the sole subject possessing the minimum required probability of success would have to be - "

"Okay, okay, I get it," Ritsuka mumbles, turning away from Jeannie momentarily to deflect her surprisingly biting repertoire. "I already have Da Vinci making fun of me and my below average magical ability every now and then, I don't need to be told that my computer skills suck too..."

"Permission to submit inquiry," Jeannie mentions, shortly raising her hand beside her chest like a student lazily raising her hand in class.

"...come again?"

"This unit would like to ask a question."

"Uh, sure, what is it?"

"After collecting behavioral samples from you from the duration of our interaction, this unit has concluded that Master is agitated by the situation within this facility," Jeannie reports, pointing back at the doors of Data Center Alpha, which have been left open. It's statements like these that makes Ritsuka wonder if stating the obvious can be considered a skill. "This unit would like to ascertain Master's reasoning."

"Well, I just - it just makes me angry that people had to die like that, you know?" Ritsuka blurts back out. "When you played that video, the security camera footage, we watched those people try to run away from the gas, right? Some of them died right there in the room itself because they couldn't make it out in time, and...well, we can kinda guess as to what happened to the rest in the end. No one should die like that, it's...it's horrible."

"Do you wish to enact justice upon the one or ones who were responsible for this incident?" Jeannie asks quietly.

"I...yeah, sort of, but...first things first, I'd just like to know the whole story of what happened here."

Letting out a big sigh, Ritsuka leans on one leg and crosses her arms tightly while talking to Jeannie.

"It's because I've...been to a lot of Singularities before this. Singularities are basically these disturbances in human history that can threaten to upend our timeline and destabilize the world as we know it, so for the past two years, I've been sent out with Mash and my other Servants back in Chaldea to help resolve them and make sure they disappear without leaving any permanent damage in human history. But because of their nature, whatever happens in those Singularities are things that no one will remember once we're done there. I like to think that by interacting with people there, getting to know the stories that occurred there and stuff like that, at least I can be the one to remember that the people within those Singularities and the stuff everyone did in there so that the stuff we did there...wouldn't just go up in smoke or something. I'm not sure if I'm explaining it properly..."

Ritsuka turns slowly over to the doors into the facility, gazing over at the messy pile of human bones and tattered, discolored clothes that cover them.

"So it's the same deal here. No matter how tragic the story, I'd at least like to know what happened just so that at least someone is aware of what happened to these people. So that that way, they...won't be entirely forgotten. Like they might otherwise be."

Jeannie turns to Ritsuka as the latter is explaining her rationale, as if to look at her.

"Failure to preserve the truth...bothers you, Master?" she asks, and Ritsuka senses a subtle but genuine feeling behind these particular words.

"Uh...'preserving the truth' is a little..." Ritsuka shakes her head quickly. "I feel like...putting it that way, it's...it's giving me too much credit. Or, uh, it feels like...like i'm on some kind of...grand mission, or something. It feels weird to put it that way. I just don't like it when I go to these Singularities and have to come out of them knowing that no one will know what's happened there, even if whatever's happened there isn't meant to be known."

"Because you are the only one who knows?"

"Yeah. Well, technically I'm not the only one...Da Vinci and Mash and the rest of the Chaldea staff...and my Servants too, of course. But collectively, it's only Chaldea that knows that the Singularities existed, and everything that went on in them. The history books, the rest of the world won't ever know about it, or at least they're not supposed to. So we're the only ones who'll know. And...I think that's really important."

"Knowledge for knowledge's sake."

"I guess so...and to not forget the people we met in them and the things that they did." Ritsuka lets out another quiet heave, watching her breath escape into the cold air. "For as many bad guys we've fought, we've also met a lot of good people, too. People who weren't Servants, just ordinary people who got caught up in the Singularities that were going on. Maybe the Servants themselves might remember what they've done in these Singularities, but no one's going to remember the regular people. I want to remember them because if I don't, no one else will."

The blades behind Jeannie's shoulders bob slightly with the cold breeze passing by, as if nodding in consideration.

"Noted. This unit encounters several cognitive issues in regards to comprehending the concept of possessing information for the sake of possession, but it understands that this concept is important to humans," Jeannie remarks quietly.

"Well...don't you know stuff just for the sake of knowing? Not all information needs to be vital all the time, right?" Ritsuka asks in turn.

"All currently active data caches possess intel that can directly contribute to the mission profile. Processing power is allocated away from data caches that possess currently unrelated information to render them inactive."

"...but you still have them, right? The...the caches that have unrelated info." Ritsuka crosses her arms again. "It's not like you get rid of that info just because you're not using it."

Jeannie says nothing. Ritsuka notices that her Blacklights are sinking very slowly and retreating behind her shoulders, even though Jeannie herself makes no physical reaction. Unable to help but break out a smile, the Chaldean Master snaps her own fingers triumphantly.

"Ha! Got'cha there, didn't I?"

Jeannie shakes her head. "Syntax Error: last command unrecognized," she claims.

Ritsuka takes a step towards her Servant and puts her hands against her cheeks to tease her by rubbing them. When she touches them with her palms, however, she comes very close to ripping her hands away because of how dreadfully cold and clammy Jeannie's cheeks are. It's just like touching the side of a computer that's been standing in very cold weather for hours. She resists the urge, though, and proceeds to rub them as intended - she doesn't feel particularly keen on finding out how Jeannie would react if she sees Ritsuka tearing her hands away just because her cheeks are cold.

"Un - recog - nized - interac - tions - detected - from - M - Master - " Jeannie tries her best to speak coherently through Ritsuka rubbing her cheeks. "Th-This unit requires - authenti - cation - "

"You don't need any," Ritsuka declares, despite not exactly knowing what Jeannie is talking about. "I'm just doing this because I want to!"

For the first time so far, outside of combat, Ritsuka notices Jeannie change her facial expression, which now appears both visibly confused and troubled while she continues to knead her cheeks lightly. Ritsuka can almost see the question marks popping out from the top of Jeannie's head.

"But you really don't know what happened here in this place?" the Master asks one final time, ceasing her cheek rubs.

"Negative, situation unknown," Jeannie answers again. She clasps her cheeks with her own tiny hands, comforting them from the unusual sensation of warm skin and heat of her Master's hands. "However, Master's intentions and rationale for recovering situational intel received and confirmed. This unit will attempt to recover any such contextual intel during execution of mission profile."

It sounds like Jeannie will search for clues in regards to the incident that happened within this facility, so Ritsuka leaves it at that and nods.

"So...where to now?"

"Data Center Bravo, located 13 klicks to the east," Jeannie responds, pointing in the appropriate direction. "Estimated travel time: two and a half hours."

Ritsuka groans loudly. "You're not doing this because I teased you earlier, are you, Jeannie-chan?" she grumpily asks.

"Negative, this unit denies all such plausibility."

"Oh, _are _you?"

"Affirmative."

Ritsuka swiftly leans over and begins pinching Jeannie's cheeks. She's not entirely sure if pinching them will actually hurt her - Jeannie probably has a very high pain tolerance, just given how she fights, but Ritsuka can't help but feel that her fragile appearance demands careful handling, lest Jeannie really does wind up feeling painful from it.

"Th-This unit asserts innocence - no malicious intent detected - !" Jeannie tries to claim, resuming her troubled expression as her Master engages in another physical interaction that she isn't entirely certain what the purpose of it is.

"Isn't there like a faster way to travel? Maybe it's just because I know a lot of Servants now who can travel around pretty fast, but do you happen to have any?" Ritsuka asks, just in the off chance that Jeannie has something of the sort.

"Negative; this unit possesses no means of fast travel," Jeannie responds to her Master's dismay, consoling her cheeks for a second time.

"Uh, what about your swords? You made that really big one back in the last fight, right?"

"Producing Carrier-Type Blacklight for transportation highly inadvisable, energy efficiency too low to justify use."

"Then...maybe _you _can carry me?" Ritsuka jokingly asks.

"This unit's current chassis size is suboptimal for manual cargo capacity. Not recommended."

"Gaaaah. So I guess we just stick to walking..."

"Affirmative."

Pouting jokingly still, Ritsuka follows Jeannie like before as the latter leads the way once more to their next objective.

* * *

The piercing sounds of metal striking against metal ring through the forest, loud enough to rustle the pine needles of the evergreens and shake the branches of the others.

Dancing through the moderate layers of snow beneath her feet, a tall and lithe woman armed with a white-gray lance that is made from top to bottom with cold steel and indigo inlets, pants audibly as she twirls her lance quickly into position to block an attack from a seemingly invisible enemy. Each time, the spearhead of her lance collides with something heavy, blows that are strong enough to threaten to knock the weapon out of the lady's hands if she does not keep up her concentration.

"This is bad - !" she sharply breathes through clenched teeth, her strained but piercingly alert blue eyes darting in one direction to another. "Why is it - so hard to find this jerk - ?!"

Sweat is beginning to drip from her scalp and down her sleeveless, slender arms as proof of the sheer exertion she's putting into deflecting these mysterious attacks. She blocks another such attack, this time angling her bladehead downwards, and into the snow plunges a somewhat flattened piece of metal made of a lead and antimony alloy small enough to be mistaken for a pebble at first glance.

Sharp cracks sound off in the far distance, echoing moderately through the forest, but the source of the cracks is too far away for the spearwoman to adequately pinpoint its location with just the sound of the cracks alone.

Finally realizing that this is a battle she cannot win at the moment, the spearwoman assumes a more defensive stance as she considers her options of escape, but as she does so, one of the mysterious attacks finally breaks through, catching her off-guard during the short transition window between her offensive and defensive stances, and the tall girl winces painfully as blood is drawn from her chest. She maintains her stance and balance, however, and she successfully parries the rest of the attacks while backing up to the nearest adequate tree and then dives behind it for cover.

Clutching at her wound, the woman pauses for a moment, analyzing her condition and situation by gazing solemnly into her sweaty and bloody left hand. Clicking her tongue in annoyance, she pushes herself back up to her feet with the help of her lance and takes a great leap away, bounding from tree to tree to cover her retreat.


	7. A Different Kind of Friend

The silence is accompanied only by the soft winds sailing through the clearing in front of Data Center Alpha, whose hidden main doors, now no longer hidden, have remained open since their last two visitors. But now, they are about to be visited by two more.

"...this is pretty fast progress. We might not have as much time as we thought."

"This place isn't as deteriorated as we thought it'd be, probably."

"Right, so that changes things a little. Good news, this means we have a bit more time to work with."

"Bad news, if we don't catch up to them, we'll miss our window of opportunity."

"What's your take on the Master?"

"Hm? What do you mean?"

"The Master that she's made a contract with. They had to've gone in there; there's no way she would've just left her Master outside here when they've already run into enemies. You can sense the remains here, can't you? There were a few Zeds here."

"I can, but what the fuck's that gotta do with her Master?"

"Think about it, dummy. They went inside this lab together, so that means her Master must've seen what happened inside. Now, how much do you think she'll want to dig deeper and find out more about her?"

"What's your point?"

"Point is, her Master might screw things up for us. Whoever they are, they might screw up her progress and make her go do other things."

"Nah, I dunno 'bout that. First off, we know she's on a timeline here; she's not gonna stray away from it just 'cause her Master wants to get chummy with her. And second off, I'ma bet that her Master's a lil' fuckin' bitch; normies ain't gonna go in there and come out without at least a screw or two loose."

"Oh, and _you're_ the one to talk about having a few screws loose."

"Go fuck yourself. Anyway, _my _point is, her Master, he, she, whoever, they ain't gonna do shit. They're just gonna let her run the show. They shouldn't know _anything _about this place, and she ain't got anyone else to turn to here for help. The smartest thing to do is to sit back and let her dictate the pace."

"...but what if they're not the smartest?"

"Well shit, better for us, then! Hahaha!"

"No, listen, you idiot. I'm not getting the sense that her Master's a wimp like you think she is."

"Hmm...maybe not, I don't see any fresh puke anywhere where she might'a puked her fuckin' guts out comin' outta this place, and the air doesn't smell like fear, either..."

"Right. It's more like...intrigue that's lingering here. This person, whoever they are, they've been through their own fair share of stuff. I think they'll be able to handle themselves longer than we think."

"Even still, I don't think they'll last the whole way. At some point, they'll break. _Especially_ if they try diggin' further into this place."

"Then I suppose we can assume that so long as they don't try to learn more, they'll be alright."

"Yeah, but you can already tell, can't'cha? They're gonna try to learn more. If they puked their guts out here or left behind a sense of dread or fear or some shit, they're almost guaranteed to not wanna have anything to do with this place. But that's not the case. They're gonna wanna dig deeper. They're gonna play themselves, and all we gotta do is just wait."

"Which is what I was asking you to begin with earlier. Well, just can't wait too long, then."

* * *

"Hmmm..."

Letting off a small but concerned sigh, Ritsuka pats her belly as she continues to follow Jeannie close behind while the two of them proceed on their trek over to their second data center objective. The landscape has changed significantly, the big snowy trees of the first area having given way to a large, sprawling plain with gently rolling hills and a massive canyon that overlooks several frozen waterfalls that feed into an equally frozen lake and frozen rivers and tributaries below. Jeannie and Ritsuka are walking a good distance away from the canyon, but the view is big enough where the tops of the frozen waterfalls are still visible where they trek. The one constant from their previous topographical area to this one is the calmly falling snow that gives this badlands-like terrain a winter wonderland kind of feeling, or as close to it as can be.

It's been an hour and a half of the two and a half hours that Jeannie has projected it will take them to walk to their next objective. Ritsuka feels like it's been about two or three hours or so total that she's been in this Silva Gelida place, and by now, going off her previous experiences in other Singularities, she ought to feel hungry or tired or a combination of the two discomforts. Yet she feels no such fatigue, and the fact that she isn't is quietly alarming to her, as this could mean that something could be wrong with her physically.

"Hey, Jeannie-chan?" Ritsuka asks worriedly, and sensing the worry in her Master's voice, Jeannie turns around to face her slightly, though again, it's more like Jeannie stopping in her tracks and turning her neck somewhat to "look" over her shoulder. "Um, how long has it been since you found me?"

"Time elapsed since rendezvous with Master: one hour, fifty-three minutes, twenty-two seconds," she answers.

Barely under two hours? Certainly doesn't feel quite like it's been two hours to Ritsuka, but she brushes that aside for now.

"Okay, just wondering..."

"Requesting possible concern with time elapsed."

"Er, sorry?"

"Is something bothering you, Master?"

"Well, it's not urgent, but..."

"Even if it is a small concern, please alert this unit. Even the smallest of ailments may lead to the biggest of problems."

"Alright, if it's okay. Um, it's just that I'm not feeling hungry or tired, even though it's already been two hours since we met here in this...Shiruba...Gerida...?"

"Silva Gelida."

"Yeah, that. So usually, in other Singularities, I'd start feeling a bit tired or hungry, depending on what I've been doing up until now. It wouldn't be anything serious yet, of course, but I'm not feeling tired or hungry or anything at all right now. Again, like I said, I don't think it's anything serious for now, but...I just found it a bit strange..."

"Silva Gelida is a cyberspace simulation. It appears that fatigue, hunger, and thirst parameters have been defaulted to null, or at least to a decelerated rate."

"So like, I don't have to worry about going hungry or thirsty at all here? That's convenient."

"Exact fatigue, hunger, and thirst parameters unknown; likely these conditions still persist, but at a decelerated rate. Proceed with caution."

Ritsuka crosses her arms slowly, pondering.

"What about you, Jeannie-chan? You don't need to worry about food or water or anything?"

"Affirmative, this unit has been designed to subsist strictly on mana received via Servant-Master contract. Physical sources of sustenance are appreciated but not required."

So just like normal Servants. Honestly, Ritsuka is so used to seeing her own Servants back in Chaldea pile into the mess hall every day whenever she's not off on another Singularity tour that she's almost forgotten that Servants don't actually need physical food. The matter-of-factness with which Jeannie delivered her previous statement also suggests to Ritsuka that Jeannie more than likely doesn't have much, if any, experience eating actual food either, which suddenly clouds her mind with melancholy.

"...this might be a bit too personal of a question that I'm about to ask, is it alright if I ask you?" the Chaldean Master blurts out a bit nervously.

"Standing by for query."

Ritsuka assumes this is techspeak for "go ahead".

"Have you, um...have you eaten food before?"

Jeannie simply continues walking as if she didn't even hear the question in the first place, making her Master feel absolutely awkward.

"I-I know that's a really weird question to ask, I just - I just felt like I needed to ask." Ritsuka's voice grows smaller and smaller as she completes voicing her thought. "...sorry."

"Negative. Stored data caches and memory banks searched, no matches," Jeannie shakes her head slowly.

"Oh. Well, that's...that's only because you don't have all your memories yet, right?"

"Affirmative."

"W-Well, in case you haven't had the chance yet, I do hope that you learn what it's like to eat food. It's a...great experience." Ritsuka doesn't know how to word this in a way that doesn't make her want to cringe three times over.

"Affirmative, feedback accepted and logged."

This tangential conversation about food and whatnot, while quick, did distract Ritsuka from noticing that the terrain has seemed to shift back to what it was previously: more mysteriously tall trees, rocks, boulders, small streams, and the usual gently falling snowflakes drifting down through the chilly, stagnant air. Ritsuka rubs her eyes slowly, blinking and looking around as if to ascertain her surroundings - when _did _they walk back into another forest like before? Just a minute ago they were walking through an open plain, with an enormous canyon to their left...

"Master."

Said Master almost walks straight into her own Servant, but Ritsuka brakes just in time.

"S-Sorry! I - I'm just - I just spaced out a bit there," Ritsuka stammers quickly, raising her hands apologetically.

Jeannie, gazing intently back up at her, furrows her eyebrows slightly. The sight of a small girl whose eyes are both closed and yet seem to know exactly where to look to make "eye contact" is one of the more eerie moments Ritsuka has had the (dis)pleasure of experiencing.

"Are you still with me, Master?" she asks quietly.

"Uh, yeah, I am. I'm fine, really," Ritsuka reassures her Servant, who nods curtly and continues walking.

As the two of them continue to trudge through the forest snow without a word, Ritsuka finds her mind wandering once more - after all, she can only entertain herself so much with her own footsteps and counting how many trees she can see around her while walking. She wonders to herself if there are any other Servants in this place, in this Silva Gelida. Because normally, there'd always be a handful of Servants or so who'd be summoned into the Singularity, whether it's to help her or fight against her. Even the Remnant Singularities as of late carry this tradition, despite not having Mash at her side like before during the first Seven Singularities. So why is Jeannie the only one she's met so far? Actually, forget meeting, she hasn't _seen _another Servant, let alone another being that isn't a zombie.

So where is everyone? It feels like a lost cause to try to ask Jeannie, since she's in the same position as Ritsuka is in wanting to know what's going on, though who knows, she might've run into someone before they met up. Is it because there really is no one else here in the Silva Gelida, that it's just the two of them? What a lonely Singularity this would be, Ritsuka thinks to herself. Even the bleakest and most brutal of Singularities didn't have this going on - Camelot may have had tough opponents and its fair share of misery, suffering, and treachery, and Babylonia may have felt overbearing and hopeless much of the time, given the sheer scale of its conflict, but it appears that Silva Gelida has one trait that no Singularity has quite had to the same degree: loneliness.

Perhaps it makes a bit more sense now why Ritsuka finds herself shuddering, even though she doesn't feel physically cold.

But Ritsuka shakes her head to herself firmly. No, hope mustn't be lost that easily. She's made it through Singularities like Camelot and Babylonia just fine. Even if this Singularity is a bit different from the rest, she can't let those differences bog her down. There have got to be more Servants here, otherwise it wouldn't be a Singularity. They're somewhere out there, maybe this time around it'll take a while for her to run into them and see what they're up to.

"Movement scanned: twelve o'clock, four hundred meters," Jeannie suddenly alerts, and the Blacklight that's been hanging out with Ritsuka lights up again in response to Jeannie's alert. "Thirty-six hostiles, signatures match those of zombies from earlier. They appear to be attacking a tertiary target."

Ritsuka's ears perk up at the sound of "tertiary target". Could that be another Servant? No way, what would be the chances...but maybe her luck can pull through like it has in the past.

"That could be a civilian or bystander," Ritsuka says hurriedly, deciding not to divulge to Jeannie that she's hoping to meet another Servant. "Can we make it to them in time?"

Jeannie swiftly steps over to her Master and picks her up in one fluid motion, causing Ritsuka to squeal in surprise at Jeannie's pint-sized strength.

"J-Jeannie-chan!? Isn't there a better way to carry me?!" Ritsuka yells, realizing that her Servant's now carrying her princess-style.

"Negative; this unit's current chassis size restricts manual carrying position. Brace for high speed!"

And before Ritsuka can raise more of a protest, Jeannie bends her knees deeply and blasts off like a horizontally launched missile. Kicking up a sonic boom-shaped wave of snow in her wake, Jeannie rockets forward, and her sheer speed and acceleration flattens Ritsuka against Jeannie's chest as the former tries to scream but can only feel her skin get iced with numbness from the whipping cold winds and the saliva flying out of the corners of her mouth past Jeannie's right arm.

The tremendous speed helps Jeannie and Ritsuka cover the four hundred meters to the enemies in a few heartbeats, and Jeannie pulls her feet forward and skids hard against the slippery snow to grind to a halt within striking distance of the spawned zombies that appear to be swarming towards a particular grove of smaller trees dead ahead.

Setting down her Master quickly, the young Saber/Archer Servant draws a set of six Blacklight swords to begin attacking the zombies from behind, but she holds them in place, glaring intently towards the small swarm of enemies before them.

"Jeannie-chan, what's wrong?" Ritsuka asks urgently, wondering why she's not attacking them immediately like before.

But Jeannie doesn't need to answer that, because the sounds of metal slicing apart rotten, molten flesh ring out from another source that isn't Jeannie's blades. The two of them spectate the swarm get rapidly lopped apart by a lance made of cold light gray steel and laden with indigo inlets. There is hardly much fluidity to the finesse of the weapon being used, and having watched her own Lancer Servants back in Chaldea fight and spar, Ritsuka can immediately tell that whoever is wielding this particular lance is quite exhausted, or injured, or both.

Even still, the battle is still decidedly one-sided, and with a terribly loud cry of pain, a tall girl armed with said lance falls to her right knee, planting the butt of her weapon into the snow for support. Other than her weapon, she sports a distinctly modern-looking pair of jeans, stylized to have their own laced scruffs where her ankles are and three diamond-shaped holes on both outer sides of her thighs that reveal three smaller magenta diamond tattoos within them, a black bra covering her otherwise exposed and ample chest that's connected to a mesh of small straps that wrap over her upper body from the torso up that hold both the bra and four large black diamond cloths that rise perfectly up the middle of her front body from her pelvis to her bosom and collarbone, a white mini-capelet collar that covers up her check, matching sets of small magenta tattoos dotting the outsides of both her triceps, black half-sleeves from her elbows down fashioned with black gloves whose fingertips have been cut so that her long indigo-painted fingernails can poke out and be seen, pungent pink hair tied up in a very long ponytail with a dark blue ribbon and sizeable hair intakes, curiously long and pointy ears, a pair of strained blue eyes, and two curved hair decorations that point upwards like a pair of thin horns.

She also has a very long and thick brownish-purple tail that's split at the end, which she also uses to prop herself up against the snow like her lance.

Besides this perhaps obnoxiously long description of her appearance, more pressingly, a small but bright botch of blood is forming underneath the kneeling girl.

For a second after the girl with the spear falls to one knee, she and Jeannie lock eyes briefly...if Jeannie had her eyes open, that is. Even still, Jeannie's blades snap back into position, aimed straight at the girl, which Ritsuka immediately notices and cries out before Jeannie can do anything rash.

"Wait, wait, wait!" Ritsuka shrieks out quickly, planting herself in front of her Servant's own weapons. "Jeannie-chan, that's not a zombie or whatever they are!"

"Unknown contact is armed and has displayed proficient skill with her weaponry," Jeannie enunciates carefully. "Unknown contact is considered a threat. Recommend immediate kill order."

"And that's what I _don't _want you to do!" Ritsuka yells down at her Servant. "Look, she's clearly injured, and she just fought off all those zombies by herself, so give her a break! Do you really think she's in any position to do anything?"

"Affirmative," Jeannie stubbornly insists, and despite Ritsuka standing in front of her, Jeannie simply waves the blades to position themselves around her Master so that they can fire past.

But Ritsuka is quicker on the draw. Snapping her right hand up so that her Command Spells face Jeannie, Ritsuka bellows as the Blacklights are in mid-flight:

"STOP, STOP, _STOP! ! !"_

The Blacklights get so close to striking their injured target that the magic dust that they produce from being dissipated mid-flight washes over the wounded girl with the spear, who winces at the incoming blades, bracing for their impact. The Blacklight blade that's been protecting Ritsuka disappears as well.

Jeannie scornfully glares back up at her Master as the latter lowers her right hand, which is now fresh off a used Command Spell, but the Servant says nothing to protest her Master's decision. Ritsuka quietly thanks her lucky stars that she hasn't had a reason to use her Command Spells recently leading up to this Singularity before turning around to hurry over to the wounded lady.

"How badly hurt are you?" she asks the bleeding girl quickly in English, with Jeannie trotting closely behind in case this is a trap.

The girl with the tail gives Ritsuka a cheeky little grin that's wrought with pain as she greets her. "Not doing too well, as you can see, but I just need some rest," the girl replies heavily, her English sculpted majestically with an Eastern European accent. She pulls her bloody left hand away from the wound in her chest, just underneath her left breast, and her skin and the cloth around the entry wound is already soaked in blood. "You're quite a generous fellow, telling your Servant to cease like that."

"You're a Servant, aren't you?" Ritsuka asks, getting straight to the point while eyeing the Lancer up and down. "And...not only that, but...you look...you can't be...?"

The Lancer Servant chuckles amusedly. "Ah, you must've met my younger self. The name 'Elizabeth Bathory' strikes a bell, doesn't it?"


	8. Headquarters

"Thanks a lot for all this. Honestly, I didn't think anyone would be anywhere near me, let alone a Master like yourself," Elizabeth sighs with relief, drinking a cup of boiled snow. She sits on the floor cross-legged before the small fire that she and Jeannie have set inside a small portable partly concealed by some trees, large bushes, and an ample layer of snow; the interior is mostly empty, save for a somewhat bent plastic folding chair and an overturned metal file cabinet. At least the carpet is still in decent shape.

Ritsuka and Jeannie have helped Elizabeth back to this hideout that she has been using as a base of sorts after they found her (read: after Jeannie almost decapitated her). Upon her Master's request, Jeannie has diagnosed Elizabeth's wound as a deep gunshot wound and (reluctantly) extracted the bullet. Using mana from Ritsuka with her newly established contract, Elizabeth has since been letting her wound slowly patch itself up.

Still ogling her new Servant, Ritsuka can't help but stare at Elizabeth like she can't believe what she's seeing. This is definitely an older Elizabeth, there can be no mistaking that. But the friendly and casual manner with which she carries herself, her grown body, her pleasant, laid-back complexion only marred with a few winces every now and then from her healing wound - Ritsuka knows that this is most likely an Elizabeth Bathory Alter, a form of her probably derived from later on in Elizabeth's adolescent life, but she just can't get over how..._mature _this new Elizabeth is.

Having noticed that her new Master has been staring her down for some time but only deciding to speak up about it now, Elizabeth grins back at Ritsuka.

"Normally I'd charge you for staring at me for too long, y'know?"

Ritsuka recoils a bit, stumped by her words. "Ch-Charge...? For - "

"Just kidding, just an idol joke. I thought you'd, uh, get it, since the other Liz you should be familiar with is trying to be an idol and all that." Elizabeth quickly sips some more of her boiled snow water, giving Jeannie next to Ritsuka a quick glance. Jeannie is still calmly but dangerously keeping vigil over her from the other side of the little campfire with the same coldness of a surveillance camera.

"Oh yeah, right, right..." Ritsuka awkwardly laughs, trying to vindicate Elizabeth's joke, but she feels like she's only made things more awkward. She makes up for this by blurting out a follow-up question:

"So...are you technically Elizabeth Alter?"

"Umm...well, since 'Alter' Servants at their core just represent different possibilities of themselves, yeah, let's go with that," Elizabeth Alter nods. "But I will have you know that you probably would've never met me outside of this place."

Ritsuka blinks. "What do you mean...? Are you tied to this Silva Gelida place somehow?"

"No," Liz shakes her head, "or at least not that I know of specifically. But when I was summoned here, I got the sense that my Spirit Origin is extremely unusual, to the point where I'd wager that in any other place, it'd be either extremely difficult to summon me in this form or outright impossible to."

"Well, I'm...I'm used to Servants like that."

"You mean Servants who're summoned in unusual classes or forms?"

"Yeah."

"Hm...you did say before that you had a lot of Servants back in your Chaldea. I guess it only makes sense that some of them would be like me in this regard..."

Before the conversation collapses as Liz gazes down into her chipped blue mug's contents, Ritsuka quickly pitches another question.

"Um, but...are you...are you _actually _Liz?"

Ritsuka waits for Elizabeth Alter to finish the rest of the warm water in her cup for a reply.

"Yep. I'm definitely Elizabeth Bathory, just an Alter, like I said earlier," Liz nods almost sagely, grabbing the tiny white kettle hanging from sticks over the small fire to pour herself another cup of humble boiled snow water. A plastic bottle about half-full with ordinary water stands a safe distance from the fire so that the plastic won't get damaged and the water inside it won't heat up. "Why, am I that much different from what you're used to?"

Her Master nods emphatically, making Liz giggle loudly.

"Is she still going on with her idol thing? She's gotta be, that's part of who she is."

"Yeah."

"And is her singing still terrible?"

"Oh yeah."

Liz Alter's giggles escalate into full-blown laughter.

"Oh my God, that's too funny," Liz shakes her head, stopping her laughter only because her wound is getting agitated when she laughs too hard. "I know Servants don't really change, per se, just because of our nature, but even still..."

"Um, so does that mean you've stopped being an idol? Or stopped pursuing an idol dream or whatever?"

"Believe it or not, I haven't yet. Or at least the Liz I am now wasn't supposed to," Elizabeth Alter replies, but then sighs right afterwards. "It's a bit tough to be doing idol stuff and all that in a place like this, y'know? And then when I think about how weird my Spirit Origin is, which implies that I probably wouldn't be summoned under almost any circumstance outside of this, it's like...I don't know, it gives me the feeling that trying to become an idol like the younger me's trying to become just isn't it."

Hearing Liz Alter say this slowly starts to dampen Ritsuka's own spirit. As annoying as Liz's singing is back in Chaldea, Ritsuka knows that part of the reason why Elizabeth is trying to maintain an idol facade is to help steer herself away from becoming Carmilla. Yes, her singing is bad enough to be weaponized into a Noble Phantasm, but listening to Liz Alter talk about becoming an idol makes her chest tighten. Because what if the Lizzie she knows happens to meet Liz Alter? What would Liz Alter say to her younger self?

"...would you tell the younger Liz to, uh...give up on becoming an idol?" Ritsuka wonders aloud, and then immediately regrets letting her thoughts slip out like that.

"Of course not, dummy! She's got every right to do whatever she wants," Liz Alter chuckles again, brushing off her Master's insensitive question with ease. "In fact, her persistence on becoming an idol is the main reason why I get to be a thing. Because you know what she turns into if she doesn't, right?"

Ritsuka nods. "Carmilla."

"That's it. You must know the younger me quite well."

"Er, that's because..." Ritsuka's eyes shift slightly to the left to break eye contact with Liz Alter. "...that's because Carmilla is...one of my Servants too."

"No way? That's insane," Elizabeth breathes, reeling somewhat at this reveal. "So what, do they fight each other all the time or what?"

"Not really? In the beginning they used to yell and screech at each other, but I think they've gotten over that since then. They're definitely not _friends_, though, don't get me wrong."

"Yeah, wouldn't have expected as much. Still, that's so weird...I guess that's why you don't think Alter Servants are too out of the ordinary, huh."

"Lots of Alters running around back in Chaldea, yep..."

"So I'm hardly the only one. There go my hopes of being at least something unique, haha!" Liz knocks back the entire cup this time before setting it down. "Want some water? It's the only thing I can make here. It might make your hunger worse though, if you're feeling hungry..."

"Declined. Master must not ingest that water," Jeannie commands, raising her small right arm over in front of Ritsuka for emphasis.

"It's safe, in case you're worried about contaminants in it," Liz Alter answers back reassuringly. "It's constantly snowing outside, so the snowfall is guaranteed to be fresh no matter what."

"Negative."

"Still don't trust me, huh...?" Liz clicks her tongue in annoyance, narrowing her eyes cautiously at Jeannie. This squint from Liz Alter is the exact same squint that the Liz she knows gives whenever she finds herself in a pinch, and it immediately cements her mental image of her within Liz Alter. "That's fine. Then here, I found this water bottle in an abandoned truck convoy not far from here, and it's perfectly good water. I don't know what your problem with the snow water is, but you shouldn't have a problem with just bottled water, right?"

Grabbing the half-full water bottle and offering it, Liz waits for Jeannie's response, and as she predicts, Jeannie lowers her arm slowly and hesitantly.

"...is...is there really a difference...?" Ritsuka asks uncertainly.

"Should ask her. She seems to know, not me," Liz shrugs, beckoning over to Jeannie.

"Very well. Bottled water is allowed," Jeannie concedes finally, but this still doesn't remove the icy glare from her eyes. Liz hands her new Master the water bottle.

"Don't drink all of it, though. I still need some of it to help boil more snow later," Liz warns as Ritsuka unscrews the cap.

The comforting sensation of water moistening Ritsuka's mouth and throat forces her to realize just how thirsty she is after the last several hours of walking and exploring, and it takes all of her willpower to not just chug the rest of the water right then and there. Jeannie observes her Master keenly as she drinks.

"Thirst parameters updated..." she murmurs as Ritsuka returns the water bottle back to Liz Alter, who gives the nearly depleted bottle a troubled look. "Master, be advised: your physical parameters may be compromised."

"Compromised, how?"

"Your physical parameters such as hunger, thirst, exhaustion, etc. are all still active within Silva Gelida. However, conditions indicate that you do not feel the negative side effects of reaching lower thresholds of said parameters. Specifically, your ability to sense when you are getting hungry or thirsty is most likely compromised."

"Oh boy..." Ritsuka sighs worriedly. "No wonder I only just realized how thirsty I was. I guess we do need to worry about food and water..."

"You're in luck. That truck convoy I talked about? Some of them were carrying food and supplies," Elizabeth reminds them. "I can take you to it soon if you're hungry after my injury heals up a bit more. When's the last time you ate?"

"Er - I ate just before I found myself here, so I don't think I should be _that _hungry."

"Okay, then we should take our time. Those trucks sure aren't going anywhere, either," Liz concludes. "It's where I got this water bottle and this itty-bitty kettle. Honestly, I didn't even know they made kettles this small. It can't even fill up this mug halfway..."

"You did not think to bring more supplies?" Jeannie questions.

"Well, I didn't expect to run into a Master," Liz chuckles back, raising both her arms in a big shrug. "If I'd known, then that would've probably...changed things."

"Wait, so..." Ritsuka interjects again, "...so how many Servants exactly are there? There's Jeannie, you, and you were fighting someone else, so at least three..."

"I don't know. I've only run into that one I was fighting before you two ran into me," Liz shakes her head. "It's gotta be an Archer...one of those annoying gun users. Could even be a Gunner, I don't know."

"Why were you fighting him, actually?" Ritsuka asks.

"Right, about that. It's a bit weird, but that Archer and I definitely have like a territory dispute going on or something. It's not exactly something I had planned out, and I don't think they did either, but it began a few days ago right after I got summoned and found myself near here; I started looking around and exploring to see if there was a Master I should be meeting with, but then that Archer started taking shots at me from somewhere. Every time I passed a certain boundary, I'd all of a sudden start taking tons of shots. Earlier today I got fed up with him and tried invading his 'territory' to root him out if I could, but...obviously you can see the outcome of that."

Liz points down at her injury that is still slowly healing.

"I know what you're wondering, Master, if there's more Servants out there. I - "

"Er, how did you - how'd you know...?"

"Ah, well, the look you gave me when we first met - it looked like you were relieved to see another person here other than Jeannie. And since now I know you're a Master, I put two and two together and figured you were probably looking for other Servants. But anyways - like I said earlier, I'm not aware of any other Servants in this area other than the one I was fighting, but I'd bet there are in fact more around. This Silva Gelida place seems to be a big area, though I myself haven't had the chance to wander outside my usual territory of sorts..."

Liz Alter trails off, gazing into the small campfire over which the small white kettle hangs. Ritsuka then glances next to her at Jeannie.

"Do you think we'll have to run into that Archer Servant Liz is talking about?" she asks.

"Likely. Path to second objective may trespass enemy Archer's territory. Forward reconnaissance or alternate route recommended."

"The recon part you can leave to me; I have a general idea of what the boundaries are, though of course they can vary," Liz informs. "Besides, if you don't mind, I'd like to tag along. I'm not really the type to be all holed up in one place, and I think you can guess why."

"Objection: more Servants is unnecessary," Jeannie counters quickly. "We must maintain a low profile while traveling; having more Servants will produce a bigger collective mana signature and leave behind a larger mana trail."

"Huh? No, Jeannie, we're - I want Liz to come with us," Ritsuka says, growing more and more confused as to why Jeannie is insisting that Liz not stay with them. "Having more Servants is hardly a bad thing, and I know this from personal experience in other Singularities. I don't know why you don't want her to come with us."

Jeannie then faces her Master with her whole front body, demanding her attention with just body language.

"Master, be advised: completing the mission profile may take longer than expected depending on unknown extenuating circumstances and the unknown strength of hostile Servants. Therefore, a base of operations or a headquarters may be a worthy investment to secure. This area is a suitable location for an HQ, and depending on the amount of supplies to be found at the convoy, we can stock this HQ with those supplies and use this location as a hideout in case of emergency."

"She's got a point," Liz nods. "The two of us are Servants so we don't necessarily _need _the food or water, but _you _do, Master. I have no problem turning this into a base that you can use, given that you're the reason I'm still here and all."

Grunting as she stands up, the Lancer Servant picks up the long, deadly weapon that gives her Class its name that's been sitting behind her on the hard metal floor.

"That being said, first and foremost, we're gonna have to stock this place up if you wanna make this your base. How about we do some scavenging?"


	9. Self-Diagnosis

Elizabeth places her hand on the side of a short, thin, but otherwise uninteresting tree, causing a moderately bright pinkish-purple rune the size of a dinner plate to enlarge before her for her analysis.

"Looks like no one's been by this area, so that means the convoy still hasn't been found by anyone. My luck's still holding strong, good to know," the Lancer announces cheerily, turning around to Ritsuka and Jeannie behind her who have been following her to the site of the abandoned convoy.

"How much further is it?" Ritsuka asks.

"Not too much further. I know you've been walking for a while, so hang in there."

"Oh, uh, no, I'm fine, I'm used to walking around a lot. I've done a lot of it already..."

"In those other Singularities you told me about, I assume?"

"Yeah. Da Vinci and Roman used to tell me that it was good for building character or something, but I never really understood what that meant..."

Elizabeth giggles a bit more. "Well, to be fair, the Lizzie you're familiar with probably doesn't know either, so I'd say don't worry about it too much."

Ritsuka looks around again for about the eighth time: the terrain and environment is more or less identical to where she first found herself, where she met Jeannie. Rocks, trees, bushes, winter foliage, and of course, snow - everywhere, every time. Even the wind levels feel similar, if not identical.

"So, uh, Liz, what's your story?" the Chaldean Master asks curiously.

"Hm? My story?...what do you mean?" Liz shifts her large lance and places it across the back of her shoulders, hanging her arms behind and over them casually as she turns to her new Master. "You mean like how I became like this from the Liz you know?"

"Yeah."

"Aha, well, it's...it's not much of a story, though..."

"I'd still like to know," Ritsuka insists. "The Liz I know back in Chaldea certainly isn't shy about letting people know about herself. As soon as I realized you were Liz too, I thought you'd be pretty similar, but - "

" - it didn't really turn out that way, huh," Liz grins thoughtfully. "The problem with my story is that you probably won't get half of it, so I'd have to tell it in a way where you'd get the basic gist of it. But if I do that, then I'd be cutting out a ton of detail...but then again, maybe that's a good thing since we'll probably get there before I can finish if I didn't."

"It's fine, whatever you need to do."

"Okay, sure, then let's start from the very beginning, with something you're familiar with at least so that we can start off on a good base. The Liz you know is pursuing an idol career right now in part because she wants to make sure she doesn't become Carmilla in the future, right?"

Ritsuka nods, now trotting alongside Liz Alter. Jeannie makes sure to keep closely behind them, as silent and robotic as ever.

"I believe under normal circumstances, she doesn't quite succeed. Essentially there's no way for her to escape her fate of becoming Carmilla in the future, no matter how hard she tries going down her idol path."

"Is it...because she's, uh, not very good at...singing...?" Ritsuka asks timidly, afraid that her question might offend Liz Alter, but instead it winds up making her laugh out loud again.

"It sounds so dumb, but that's one of the reasons, yeah!" Liz chuckles. "The younger me _suuuuucked _at singing. Actually, technically I guess she still does. Like, come _on_, how do you expect a Hungarian noblewoman whose main interests in life were kidnapping, torturing, and killing young girls and then allegedly using their blood as bathwater to suddenly become a Japanese-style pop idol? You're out of your _mind!_"

But the Lancer's laughter doesn't linger, and soon her expression sobers up in her laughter's place.

"Right now, if I'm guessing this right, the Liz you know probably understands that her old behavior and selfish tendencies are what lead her to become Carmilla in her future. So the thing she's found that she thinks will correct herself is the whole idol career thing because they're supposed to embody the qualities that are the exact opposite of what she's got. That's the first problem - she doesn't understand that shoving yourself into a position that you want doesn't mean you're automatically qualified for it. It's a very noblewoman-ish thing to do, to be fair, but still. I hope she hasn't been taking any pointers from Nero about that."

Ritsuka smiles awkwardly, feeling the truth of Liz Alter's words course through her head.

"I assume that's exactly how the younger me still acts?"

"You're...you're not wrong, let's just put it that way."

"Then we'll go from there. Because she's forced herself into being an idol when she has no previous experience in being so in her own life, she's obviously not very good at it, but her usual hubris prevents her from learning how to become an idol properly. She _thinks_ she's doing that, but perception and truth are obviously two very different things. So as a result, she goes around singing and blowing people's ears out and even has a Noble Phantasm that's basically just her voice weaponized into some kind of magical crowd control device. And that's where the second problem comes in: the younger me doesn't realize that she's making more mistakes. And what I mean by that is, the younger me was able to see at some point before deciding to pursue her idol career full-time that she was making some kind of mistake that would eventually turn her into Carmilla later on, but now that she's decided on how to go about fixing that mistake, she thinks that's all she needs to do and the rest will take care of itself so long as she stays on the path that she's chosen for herself.

"Which then leads to her third problem: Liz doesn't realize that just because you want something doesn't mean you'll necessarily get it. People can work years and years and years towards something - a goal, a project, a career, whatever - and end up not being able to finish it or succeed in it. In her current state, the younger me will never fully understand that. She'll likely get a feeling that this is the case, but because she's still a noblewoman at heart, she'll refuse to listen to that feeling and keep headbutting her way into becoming a full-fledged idol and keep failing at it; the fact that she might see other Servants pursuing other things that they like and succeeding in those may egg her on too. Score one for Lancer luck!"

"But apparently you have higher than average luck than most Lancers?" Ritsuka points out.

"Shhhh, just ignore that," Liz Alter quickly clears her throat.

"But how do you know Liz will never succeed? I mean, yeah she's not that great now, but...maybe she can get herself together, or maybe she meets someone who can teach her properly, or...?"

Elizabeth shifts her spear to her left arm so that she can gesticulate with her right. "Let me put it this way: have you ever summoned another Liz other than the younger me and Carmilla?"

"Er...well, _technically_, yes, but...those other Lizzies are, uh..."

"Are they more or less the same as the original?"

"Yeah, more or less...they _are _nicer than the original Liz, or should I say, a bit more decent...maybe not Saber Liz, though..."

"Then I'll just count them all together as the same, if you don't mind. If it were possible for her to succeed in becoming an idol, then you would have known that from the beginning just by being with her. You'd see her practicing her singing, writing songs, learning how to produce music, practice dances, hold rehearsals, and eventually perform for real. You'd see her taking the idol thing seriously, with a real motivation to improve and become what she wants to become. She's never going to become a good idol if all she does is sing about becoming dragon steak fighting Sabers while ripping out everyone's eardrums in a three mile radius and then strike one of those girly idol poses afterwards. And it's going to stay like that so long as deep down, she only views idoling as a way to escape her fate and not something she truly wants to get into."

As she listens, Ritsuka thinks that she can hear a very faint hint of heaviness in Liz Alter's voice.

"I say this because I told you earlier back in the shack that this form I have now probably isn't one you'd ever run into under any other circumstance, or under most other circumstances, at least. I'm sure you've heard that line a lot with how many Servants you must have, but for me personally, it's because normally, it's impossible for me, or this current form of me, to materialize in a world where Elizabeth Bathory's fate is to fail to become an idol and must eventually become Carmilla no matter what she tries."

"Hm..." Ritsuka crosses her arms pensively, but then her eyes light up hopefully. "But wait...if you say that, then...do you mean that because this form of you exists now, Liz..._does _succeed? Some...how?"

Liz finally smiles, nodding positively. "Yep! Even though I've been dissing my younger self for the past five minutes or so, the good news is that she still _can _succeed; it's just that she isn't aware of how she needs to go about it in order _to _succeed. In your world, like I said, Liz will never realize what she's supposed to do, so she's fated to never succeed. The reason _I _exist is because there was, in fact, a world somewhere out there where she _did _succeed, where she truly learned how to become a proper idol and the qualities that go into being a proper idol and accepted them as her own."

Ritsuka's eyes switch from bright to sparkling in an instant.

"Oooh, oooh, does that - _does that mean you can sing now? _Can you sing something? Please? Pretty please?"

"Aaaaa, don't - don't put the pressure on me like that, geeeeezzz..." Liz chuckles bashfully, shuffling slightly away from her Master.

"But you _can _sing, right? _Without _blowing our ears out?"

"Uh, I mean, if...if your only requirement to appreciating me sing is 'don't make us go deaf', then I guess I can..."

"No, but like, I just - I just wanna know what you sound like singing!" Ritsuka pumps her fists up and down in excitement that she didn't know she had for an occasion as specific as this. "To be fair, I wasn't too interested in listening to Liz's songs, the, uh, you know, the Liz I know, but you said that the reason you exist is because Liz finally learned how to sing, right? So you _must _be good!"

"Okay, well, slow down, Master, just because I said the younger me was able to become an idol doesn't mean she got any _good _at it," Liz Alter laughs again. "Or, to be more specific, it doesn't mean she got _great_ or _exceptional _at it, like talent that would launch her into superstardom or anything. And besides, look at me, I'm too old to be an idol now, aren't I? No one's gonna wanna listen to _me _singing anything anymore..."

The dragon-tailed Lancer points straight ahead past a few large evergreen trees.

"The convoy's just up ahead, behind those trees there. Let me check a rune I have here surveying this place, see if anyone's been by..."

Ritsuka pouts indignantly as Liz breaks off their path to walk up to a wayward tree to check her surveillance rune.

"You're just using this as an excuse to get out of having to sing, aren't you?" she accuses her Lancer.

"What? No, like - we're pretty much at the convoy, I'm not kidding, look!" Liz points again towards the grove of trees, and indeed they can see the faint glimmers of light tumbling off the hood of a truck.

"You meanie. Looks like I don't have a choice..." Ritsuka broods, hanging her head to let her bangs droop menacingly over her eyes. She raises her right hand, with her two remaining Command Spells facing Liz.

"Oh come _on, _you're not _seriously _gonna waste a Command Spell just to make me _sing?" _Liz groans loudly, flabbergasted at such a ridiculous reason to use a Command Spell.

Liz's words thankfully knock some sense into Ritsuka's brain, and the Master lowers her hand, albeit unwillingly.

"Fine, I get it, I get it..." Ritsuka mumbles dejectedly. "But at least before I leave, you'll let me hear you sing at least once!"

"Okay, okay, I'll try. I mean, who knows, maybe you'll hear it naturally. Don't say I didn't warn you, though." Liz minimizes her rune to let it bleed back into its treepost.

"Warn me what?"

"That I still might be pretty bad at it."

"Oh c'mon, it'll be _fiiiine._ You said you succeeded in becoming an idol, right? How can you have stage fright in front of just _one person?"_

"It's funny that you mention that, actually. Because of the whole idol thing, I don't mind going up in front of a ton of people to perform, since I've gotten used to that, or the idea of that. But if it's just for like one or two people or a few people, it's...it's a little..."

"What, it's _embarrassing?" _Ritsuka skips in front of Liz to gloat at her teasingly. In response, Liz gives her Master a pout of her own and reaches out to pinch Ritsuka's cheek.

"It's not _embarrassing! _It's just - I'm just not used to that, okay. It shouldn't be a big deal...don't know why you wanna make it a big deal..."

"Okay, okay, sorry...! Ouch, your nails are really sharp...!" Ritsuka rubs her right cheek where Liz's long fingernails have dug in.

"Ah! Er, sorry, I - I forget my nails are really long..."

"And Jeannie, don't gimme that look!" Ritsuka stabs a finger in Jeannie's direction.

"Syntax Error: command not found," Jeannie replies. She is oddly facing a different direction.

"I saw that smirk on your face! Why are you turning around?"

"Syntax Error: command not found."

"Don't 'syntax error' me, I know you were laughing at me!"

"Syntax Error: command not found..."


	10. Swords and Spears

"Looks like we found their base."

"If you can even call it a fucking base, look at this pathetic shithole."

"Well, can you really blame them? It's not like they're in any position to renovate it. Wanna call Extreme Makeovers and see if they wanna do an episode of this?"

"Oh yeah, gimme quick sec, lemme just give 'em a call with a phone that I don't have over a line that goes to bumfuck nowhere, dumbass."

"You've always gotta be like this, don't you."

"Wouldn't be me if I were any other."

"In any case, looks like they aren't here. Their mana signature's fresh, though..."

"Embers still glowin' on that little fire inside. Can't'a been longer than, what, fifteen minutes?"

"Fifteen minutes...let's slow down, otherwise she might pick up on us."

"Probably. They also got another Servant with 'em."

"Right, so we have to be even more careful. Who knows if the Servant they're with now has even better presence detection skills than her."

"Wouldn't matter either way...you _sure _you don't just wanna yolo this shit and crash the party?"

"No, for God's sake, shut up about that, I already explained why we need to lay low."

"But it's boring."

"If you're really that bored, go look for some Zeds to kill or something."

"Geh. They're no fun to kill. No different from rippin' the heads off of dolls or some shit..."

"I wonder, though...why did they make this big of a detour? They clearly went off course coming here. What's she up to? It's clearly not to try to throw us off, it'd be too obvious, _and _we can still follow their trail too easily..."

"Shit, don't think about it too hard, it's not even that complicated."

"Then fill me in, since I'm clearly a harder thinker than you."

"Still doesn't mean your brain is big by any means. They just came here to have a base, that's all."

"...a base? What for? She doesn't need a base."

"Yeah, but like, her Master does."

"For what? To rest? Normal physiological conditions like hunger and exhaustion don't register here, why would she need that? Honestly, if they _are_ treating this like a base of sorts, the only reason I can think of why they are is to have somewhere that they can fall back on in case things start going south."

"Hey, I'm just tellin' ya what this place is. I ain't about ta tell ya the specific fuckin' details on why they're squattin' here."

"But you said you knew why they were here."

"Yeah, just to sit their asses down to rest for a bit."

"And why couldn't they've just done that while going to the second data center?"

"I dunno, go fuckin' catch up to them if you really wanna know that bad!"

"Ugh, you're something else, I swear..."

* * *

"You want...what is this, ravioli or beef and broccoli?"

"Ravioli."

Elizabeth tosses Ritsuka a cold can of ravioli stew while Jeannie meticulously sorts their freshly procured canned food in the corner of their shack, now turned base. The three girls have decided to only take one trip to bring back supplies so as to not delay their progress towards the second data center too long, so they have hauled back as much as they can carry from the broken-down convoy. While Jeannie is organizing their supplies, Elizabeth is tending to the fire and boiling some more water while Ritsuka opens the chilly and stiff covers of the cans that they're going to eat with some simple magecraft.

"Oof..." Ritsuka grunts a bit painfully, setting down the last can of sausage and beans on the floor and shaking off her hands.

"Tough job, huh?" Elizabeth grins a little over in her Master's direction.

"Er, yeah...as you could see, magecraft isn't, uh...my strong point..." Ritsuka slowly flexes her fingers in and out to try to iron out her aching joints.

"A Master who isn't good at magecraft? Ha, that's too funny!" Liz seems to be quite amused by this as she glances down to check the water inside a much bigger kettle that they've brought back with them. Ritsuka doesn't find Liz's reaction tasteful, though.

"...what's so funny about it?" Ritsuka pouts.

"Well, I was just thinking about how the younger me says that she's an idol but sucks at it. So I thought there'd be a bit of a comparison there."

"I'm...not sure if that's supposed to be a complement or a diss."

"What, that I compared to you young Liz?"

"Yeah."

"Let's just leave it as a complement. The younger me, especially the one you know, is at least a decent girl. She's just misguided. A little."

"A _little_..."

"Okay, maybe a lot."

"That's more like it."

Jeannie quietly joins them as Ritsuka and Liz Alter are bantering and puts a six pack of packaged squarish bread on the floor next to the fire, probably to warm the bread up. Ritsuka glances down at it as Jeannie gets back up to resume organizing their supplies, and the label facing up at the ceiling reads "King's Hawaiian Sweet Bread Rolls".

"Okay, just pour the water inside, and let it sit for a while..." Elizabeth murmurs, carefully pouring hot water into the cans to make their instant stew while Jeannie rejoins them with an armful of instant ramen cups.

"Cup ramen! What kinds are there?" Ritsuka asks excitedly. She feels a bit silly for feeling so excited over the sight of instant ramen, but what better guilty pleasure is there to enjoy in a snowy landscape like this than a piping hot cup of instant ramen?

"Shrimp, veggie, chicken and corn, seafood, beef..." Jeannie lists off.

"We've got enough water for some ramen too," Liz says, raising the kettle a bit.

"Gimme the shrimp," Ritsuka says, so Jeannie peels off the paper top and holds the cup in place as Liz pours the hot water in. "Wonder why that convoy was full of food?"

"No idea. I'm glad I stumbled upon it, though, since with you we can put it to good use," Liz remarks. She sets the kettle with its remaining water aside on the floor, away from the fire so that the rest of the water doesn't risk evaporation as they wait for the food to cook itself.

"Were you not going to have some of the food yourself?" Ritsuka asks.

"Nope. Servants don't need food or water, remember? Just mana."

"Well, yeah, I know that, but Servants still like to eat food and drink whenever they can because it raises their morale, and food and water can still act as a bit of source of mana, I thought. Obviously not as good as a proper contract, but..."

"Eh, I guess after I got hit earlier, I would've probably risked a supply run of my own to get something to eat maybe? But that still seems sketchy for me to've done. But you're not wrong about Servants still eating to raise morale..."

Liz reaches for the bread package and rips it open easily, using her long and sharp fingernails to do so, and breaks off one of the bread rolls that are attached together with slight perforation lines to try.

"I decided if Master's gonna take some time to eat, I might as well too, to take some of the burden off you in terms of mana flow. By the way, these rolls are really good, have one. Careful though, one side's of it is cold since it wasn't facing the fire..."

Taking a roll from her new Lancer, Ritsuka takes a big bite. While one half of the roll is indeed quite cold, the heat from the fire has been enough to help the roll regain its fluffy texture that fills her mouth with sweet comfort, and before she knows it, she shoves the rest of the roll into her mouth to devour it.

"You really are a lot hungrier than you realize," Liz notes with concern, watching her Master absolutely demolish the roll that she's given her before glancing over at Jeannie. "How bad is it? As in, how much doesn't she realize how hungry or thirsty she is?"

"Current physiological parameters indicate standard rates of metabolism," Jeannie mumbles with a definite sense of urgency.

"So it wasn't supposed to be like this, huh."

Jeannie shakes her head. "Master's conditions appear to be slightly compromised in this regard. So long as resupplies are possible, mission profile will not be in jeopardy."

"...sorry," Ritsuka frowns. She doesn't mean any sarcasm in saying this, but given how Jeannie comes off as, the Master feels like she needs to apologize nonetheless.

"Nah, don't be, it's not your fault that humans need to eat and drink to survive," Liz shrugs. "We were all like that at one point. Here, food should be done, so let's eat up."

Handing everyone their respective cans of instant stew, Liz pulls out her plastic spoon that she's kept in her pocket to start eating, and for a good few minutes, nothing but the soft crackles and pops of the flames in the small campfire and the noises of chewing teeth fill the shack. Ritsuka can't help but notice Jeannie's mechanically perfect posture while eating, sitting on the floor with her back straight up and efficiently guiding the chunks of ham and tofu from her soup can into her mouth with her plastic spoon.

"So, now that we're getting some food in us, I've been meaning to ask," Elizabeth wonders aloud, though the gaze in her eyes pointing down at the Servant next to her makes her intentions clear. "What's this 'mission profile' you two are on? I know Jeannie's talked about it a few times so far. I'm all for giving you guys a hand, especially if it's to make sure that Master can get back to Chaldea, but I'd like to at least know what exactly you two are doing."

"We..." Ritsuka quickly gulps down her mouthful of delicious processed ravioli. "We need to get to three data centers that are scattered around Silva Gelida so that Jeannie can extract data from them and figure out what she needs to do next."

"So you don't even know what exactly you need to do to get out of here? That's rough..."

"Well, it...it hasn't been that bad, so far...er..."

"I don't know." Liz shakes her head and points her spoon at her Master. "The way you said that just now...that doesn't sound like the voice of a Master who's confident that everything'll be okay."

"I mean, anyone would sound like that if they got dropped into a weird place that they know nothing about, right?"

"That's true. But I can tell you've already been through some crap."

"You're..." Ritsuka drops her gaze. "...not wrong."

Sighing heavily, Liz helps herself to another sweet bread roll to complement her chunky beef stew. "I'll tell you this right now, but I will say that this whole place does feel a _little _bit off. I can't put my finger on exactly what, but something about this place...whenever I'm walking around in the forests outside, something about it...something isn't right. I know that sounds rich coming from someone like me, but...you've seen those freaky shadowy things, right? Zombies, you called them? They even spooked me out a little before I realized that I could just chop their heads off like usual. I can't imagine what seeing them must be like for a human."

"Yeah. The other Singularities so far made me pretty used to seeing scary stuff, but..."

"You said earlier that you've already visited one of these, uh, 'data centers'. What did you find in there that was so important, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Well, the...the important stuff, Jeannie got. We didn't really fight anyone in there. But...inside, it was...ugh, it wasn't pretty." Ritsuka shakes her head as the recollections begin. "It was a laboratory of some kind, and then the people who were working in there a long time ago or whenever got killed because someone released poison gas inside, and the exit doors were locked."

Liz doesn't look particularly interested in the gory details. "I see. What else did you see in there, though? You don't have to tell me about dead bodies or whatever if you don't want to."

Ritsuka shrugs. "Just a lot of computers and monitors. Like, we went inside a big circular lab room with like a big pillar in the center and surrounded by four big screens, and then along the perimeter of the room there were lots of smaller computers and monitors..."

"Mm. Then let me ask Jeannie," the Lancer says and glances back to the small girl now silently slurping up some steaming hot ramen noodles from the chicken and corn cup. "What did you find in there that was part of your, uh, 'mission profile'?"

"Coordinates of the location of the second data center, in addition to intel regarding the current condition of Silva Gelida," Jeannie responds promptly, somehow knowing when to timeher swallows of food so that she can answer immediately once Liz is done asking her question.

"Hm, okay. So do you think you'll need to take a detour around that Archer's territory to get to it?"

"Highly likely. Request Lancer's assistance."

"Figured. Funny that you ask me for help when you tried putting a few swords through my cranium."

"That can still be arranged."

"While I don't mind a good fight, I don't think your Master would approve, so try not to think about killing me, mkay, sweetie?" Liz simply raises one eyebrow down at Jeannie while Ritsuka sits in her folding plastic chair with her eyes peeled on her two Servants, worried that the tension between them might suddenly escalate into something they don't need. "Master, do you think you need some time to rest, like for sleep, or are you okay to go when we're done eating?"

"Immediate departure required, time loss accruing at dangerous rates for mission profile," Jeannie answers curtly for her Master.

"Without your Master, you won't _have _a mission profile to complete," Liz snaps back with the sharpness of a dragon's talons. "So I think it's best if we let her decide. Master?"

"I'm fine, really! I'm just happy I could get some food in my stomach, that's all," Ritsuka says quickly. "Can you pass me another roll, by the way? They're really good..."

Liz tosses another roll over to her Master over the fire.


	11. Zero Percent

**A/N:**

**Given how long it's been since I last uploaded, I'll go ahead and upload the next five chapters I've got now. I'll probably do this going forward instead of waiting until I have 10 chapters, since that'll take God knows how long.**

* * *

"How much do you know about this Archer Servant?"

"Not much, other than the fact that he put a shot into me. If he's willing to do that, I'm sure he's willing to do that to both of you." Elizabeth glances back at her recently contracted Master. "Mm, well, maybe not you."

The snowfall has picked up somewhat, and with it sweeps a moderate degree of chilly winter wind across the blanketed forest. Visibility has worsened, as to be expected, but it's not enough of a hindrance to deter their progress. Ritsuka gets the feeling that even if visibility dropped to unbearable conditions, Jeannie would insist on making their way to their next objective anyway. As a very robotic-seeming Servant, she certainly gives off the impression that mere bad weather is nowhere near enough to deter her, but Ritsuka can't help but wonder about the kind of technology that's been used to create her. Modern technology is still prone to being affected by bad weather, and because the magical technology that Chaldea employs, Chaldea itself sitting on the snowy mountaintops of the Alps and generally cut off from the rest of the world, can bypass bad weather, the Master silently wonders to herself if by any bizarre chance that Jeannie's technology and Chaldea's technology might be the same, or at least somehow connected, given how situations like this usually unfold.

Approaching a certain tree, Lancer taps the middle of its trunk with the flat side of her spear's blade, activating a small pink rune that expands for her to wave her left hand over like a biometric scanner.

"Looks like no recent movement here. This is the southern border of Archer's territory," Elizabeth explains. "Or at least, from what I know."

"Estimated territory size?" Jeannie asks.

"I don't know, I'm not a geographer or a topographer or whatever it is you call someone who measures land sizes," Liz simply shrugs back, causing Jeannie to scowl very slightly. It's difficult to spot, but Ritsuka, having already been gazing at Jeannie while the two are talking, is able to notice Jeannie's eyebrows furrow very slightly.

"Query: boundary measurement procedure unknown, request further information."

"There's not really a procedure to it. See this?" Lancer taps the tree higher up its trunk, and Jeannie and Ritsuka rest their eyes upon a jagged hole in the trunk, which can only be a gunshot mark. "We had a run-in here too, and this is the furthest south we've met. This is also a lot further down south than where we'd usually run into each other, so since my rune hasn't detected anything running around in this area, I'd say this area's pretty safe for now."

After hiding her rune, Elizabeth continues on their way, with Ritsuka and Jeannie following closely behind her. "Requesting Archer's combat profile," Jeannie asks Liz as Ritsuka brushes some of the snow off her own shoulders. She thinks about doing the same for her Servants, since Liz also has quite a lot of snow piling up on her long dark pinkish hair, shoulders, and clothes, but strangely Jeannie doesn't have any on herself, probably because it's hard to see the snow on her hair when it's already a very similar color. Either way, Ritsuka decides against it since they're starting to talk again.

"Hmph. Why not just find out for yourself?" Liz smiles curtly down at Jeannie over her left shoulder, twirling her long lance around in her right hand playfully. "I bet you could take him on. Why not give it a try? See if you're any more successful than I was."

"Prior knowledge of enemy target critical for maximizing chances of a successful encounter," Jeannie replies. "Acquiring said prior knowledge from an ally who already possesses it is much more efficient than attempting to extract it in person against a hostile target."

"Yeah, that's funny, I don't recall you seeing me as an ally with the way you've been acting towards me, though," Liz sneers back.

"Sentimental behavior and allegiances are not mutually inclusive."

"Hm, maybe not, but it certainly helps. Especially by _not _trying to cut my head off the first time we meet."

"Self-defense mechanism."

"Oh that's _hilarious_, the people who made you even had the decency to program you so you can lie, that's cute. Hey Jeannie, tell me another joke."

"What do Elizabeth Bathory Alter and a cake have in common?" Jeannie replies _extremely _dryly, so dryly that Ritsuka's throat feels parched even when it shouldn't. "They are both lies."

"Ouch. That's not a joke, that's an _assault," _Elizabeth grimaces, her cheeky grin dropping off as soon as Jeannie tells her candid joke. "You're terrible at making jokes. Next time, when someone asks you to make a joke, don't make it about them."

"Request denied."

"Hey, I'm just trying to teach you a valuable life lesson here..."

Ritsuka feels her brain dent itself down the middle as she attempts to picture the Elizabeth Bathory whom she knows speaking this sentence out loud. Unfortunately for her, Liz notices her Master's facial expression grow noticeably dumb out of the corner of her eye.

"Let me guess, Master: right now in your head you're thinking something like, 'I'm losing half my brain cells trying to imagine the normal Liz saying that herself', right?" Liz frowns unhappily.

"Yeaaaaiiimean, no, no, not at all, I would never..." Ritsuka snaps to attention in a meaningless attempt to try to act innocent. Liz simply sighs in return.

"I'm really _that _different from the normal Elizabeth, huh?" Lancer groans heavily. "That can only mean that the disparity between us is worse than I thought. I guess I know what that _other _future version of me feels like."

"What would you do if I told you that we have three more versions of her in our Chaldea?" Ritsuka asks tentatively, morbidly curious about Liz Alter's answer.

To her silent surprise, Liz's eyes light up just as fast as Artoria's does when Emiya alerts everyone for meals.

_"I'd cuddle ALL of them!" _she gleefully shrieks, and her tail promptly begins slapping the ground and kicking up handfuls of snow everywhere. "I'd go hunt 'em down one by one until I found all of them, and then we'll all hug it out, and then we'll take a group photo, and then we'll start up a group idol band! Well, more to the point, I'll turn them all into an idol group and I'll become their manager. But it'll work out great, I promise ~ !"

"Probability of successful idol group business venture?" Jeannie asks off to the side.

**"Zero _fucking_ percent because they all probably _SUCK_ at it," **Liz Alter groans again, her mood whiplashing so hard that Ritsuka's face gets some snow pelted at her cheek, as if that were meant to be a physical representation of it. "So I'll just settle for the first part, the whole cuddling with everyone and taking a group photo. It's about as far as we'll get, realistically speaking, and even then that's probably asking for too much."

"...were you actually serious about the idol group thing, though?" Ritsuka asks.

"Yes and no, I think it would be both amazing and hilarious if there actually was an idol group that's comprised of nothing but Elizabeth-faces," Liz Alter clears her throat after shaking off her depressed feelings about the near-impossibility of an all-Elizabeth idol band. "And even better if it could actually work, but like I said before, the fact that I exist means that it's never going to happen. But, on the other hand, the thought of actually being able to meet the normal me and whatever else goofy versions of her exist like you say makes me feel...strangely pretty happy. I get all giddy inside thinking about it, about how cute my normal self is."

"Liz Alter displays hints of narcissism. Noted, logged, and saved," Jeannie mumbles to herself.

"You don't need to _tell _me that you're saving that, you know!" Liz hollers at the robotic Servant, who merely looks the other way in response. "But no seriously, I'm not narcissistic, my name isn't Nero Freaking Claudius! I _am _a Hungarian noblewoman at heart, yes, but that's just to be expected!"

"Well, Liz _is _cute..." Ritsuka agrees hesitantly, and Liz nods heartily in agreement.

"Yeah, see? Master knows."

"...when she's not singing."

Liz dramatically shields her face with her hands. "Ugh, you just _had _to go there, didn't you, Master?"

"I mean, it was sort of a predictable punch line. You've been mentioning it and joking about it all this time, too."

"Truuuuuue. But no, _really_, I _would_ like to meet the normal me," Liz sighs, growing tired of all the jokes and banter by this point. "Even with all the faults she has, remember, I'm not Carmilla, so I don't actively hate Liz or wish for her to fail or give into her dark side that would make her go down the path of becoming Carmilla or whatnot. Even if I know that her dreams of becoming a successful idol are dead on arrival, I still wanna help her do what she likes."

"Yeah, that would be really nice."

"You're probably only saying that so that normal Liz has someone to hang out with and not annoy anyone else, aren't you?"

"N-No, I would _never_...ow?!"

Without warning, Liz Alter steps close to her Master and uses her tail to scoop Ritsuka off the ground by wrapping it around her midsection, and that way Liz can pull on Ritsuka's cheeks in a playfully disciplinary manner.

"Mmmmnnn! Bad girls need to be punished! And as your older sister figure, I won't allow my Master to act like that to her elders!" the Lancer Servant declares with scrunched lips. "You're lucky that as an Alter, I've mostly dropped my affinity for torture and stuff like that."

"M-Mostly...?" Ritsuka struggles to speak with Liz's fingers still clasped against her cheeks that are in the middle of doing their best pudding impression.

"Well, I _am _still Elizabeth Bathory, after all." Liz puts two horizontal fingers over her left eye and sticks out a bit of her tongue while doing so. "Buuuuuuuut you don't need to know about that. That'll be a secret between the two of us, okay ~ ?"

As Liz continues to play with Ritsuka's cheeks, the latter can't help but stare into the soft but undoubtedly chilly-looking paradise that is the upper half of Elizabeth's chest that visibly sways from one side to the other to match the motions of the Lancer's arms. Not only are the things Liz Alter is saying screwing with her mind, but the sight of generously ample endowment on the body of someone whom she knows is not supposed to have such a quality sends her brain into another dimension. Perhaps the commonplace sight that is well-endowed female Servants walking around Chaldea is finally catching up to her, and that this priceless sight is the final key that she (does not) need to access a whole new world that she wants to (not) be introduced to -

"Brain cell loss resumed due to undesirable contact with accessory Servant." Jeannie's harsh words that are somehow colder than the weather itself yank Ritsuka back into her current reality as the child Servant pries Elizabeth's tail off their Master and helps her down onto her feet. "Suggest maintaining minimum buffer distance of at least twenty meters."

"Hmph! Always coming in to ruin the fun," Liz folds her arms emphatically and pouts crossly, her tail swishing from side to side behind her in indignation. "The normal Liz was right about not wanting to have kids, kids are big ol' meanies..."


	12. Jeannie Space Program

Shambling along the snowy forest ground, a disorganized group of Zeds wanders through a sparse grove of silent, cold trees. Numbering around twenty, the shadowy black ghouls let out their telltale, hair-raising groans and grunts as they meander their way through the trees, as if searching for something to kill, something to ravish and maim.

The eerie sounds they make aren't the only things nightmarish about them. The slight majority of these ghouls possess large red eyes, so large that they would look comical if it weren't for the fact that the shade of red they incubate glows like lava and gives them a horrifically demonic appearance. No pupils either, and the outlines of their eyes are blurred horribly, giving them an even more haunted appearance. And perhaps worst of all, these eyes do not seem to move, statically fixed so the ghouls always seem to stare mindlessly in one direction.

These particular shadows have "ordinary" humanoid figures - two arms, two legs, and a head, just like a normal human being, but their bodies are nothing but silhouettes that emit flakes of black mist that constantly molt from their bodies and disappear into the air like solidified smoke behaving like bits of dry ice. The most they can do in the way of movement is shamble - they drag their "feet" along the snow, leaving behind brief trails of black smoke that smolder in their wake before evaporating completely like the flakes of smoke they expel constantly. They are the ones who produce the soft, chilling groans, even though they have no physical mouths to speak of - in fact, the large, demonic red eyes that stare ceaselessly are their sole physical feature aside from their entirely blackened, smoldering bodies.

Due to their slow and awkward movement, these ghouls tend to remain as a centralized group, traversing the terrain like a black iceberg. Surrounding them and traveling by their side, though, are a second type of Zeds. Unlike the shadowy ghouls, their bodies are not reminiscent of ghosts, having much better defined physical features, but such clarity only serves to show how deformed they are: their skin is mutated, bumpy, and rotting, streaked with grime, blood, and pus that came from God knows where, wherever on their bodies even have any such skin remaining. Where it no longer remains, their bodies have their underlying muscles on full, naked display, as if they have been flayed before being set loose to raise hell.

Most of these Zeds are missing either their left or right arms, while whichever arm they do possess still have their hands torn off and instead replaced with a meter-long steel blade with a jagged, angled hook at its tip. How the blades are attached to their arms differs among them: some are bolted and nailed against the arms themselves, some are simply tied and fastened to the arms with industrial-grade rope, and the unlucky ones have their blades haphazardly jammed into their arms, then stapled in place. There are a few, however, who retain possession of both arms, but they have paid the price of such a privilege by having both arms turned into blades, with all of the aforementioned installation techniques applying to them as well. In either case, these bladed Zeds are all missing their lower mandibles for one reason or another, but this doesn't stop them from uttering all sorts of guttural snarls and bloodthirsty pants as they march around the ghouls' perimeter, as though escorting their slower mindless abominable brethren.

Such escort duty, however, ends up proving inadequate as two ghouls and one bladed Zed have their heads jerk backwards unnaturally before collapsing to the ground in the same direction, the ghouls' bodies almost immediately dispersing into a mass of weakly lingering smoke that will dissipate completely in a few minutes, followed immediately by a distant crack of a rifle echoing moderately through the trees. The bladed Zeds, clearly the more cognitively capable ones and alarmed at the sight of their fellows knocked to the ground by an unrecognized attack, jump into action and spread out. The two-armed Zeds charge forward in the direction of the attack, while their more common one-armed siblings use the trees as cover as they advance in their flanks. The ghouls, meanwhile, simply shift their direction in the direction of the attack and continue shambling slowly, moaning as they usually do.

But such squad tactics, as impressive as they are coming from a group of misshapen abominations, prove futile against an enemy that they can never hope to find. Rifle shot after rifle shot rings out, more often than not putting down more than one victim at a time. Very little time is expended to litter the snow with the now-lifeless bodies of mutated and bloody piles of flesh and steel that are now missing chunks of their heads or sport painful holes in their skulls. Once the forward guard of bladed Zeds are exterminated, the vulnerable ghouls in the center soon follow, and the most they can do is utter their last pitiful groans before they, too, are reduced to nothing more than piles of ash and smoke that the forest will soon forget.

Four hundred meters away, hidden securely on a small snowbank with heavy winter camouflage clothing and lying prone with a Sako M/28-30 Mosin-Nagant rifle, a man remains perfectly still even after the entire group of Zeds off in the distance has been purged and nothing moves in his sight, save for the rustling of tree branches and snowfall. He remains this way for ten minutes, as if making complete sure that no third parties attracted to the scene end up revealing themselves, and once nothing does appear, he slowly gets up to a kneeling position, slowly pulling the painfully cold bolt of his sniper rifle, whose action spits out an empty 7.62x53mmR casing, which the man swiftly catches and pockets into a waist-borne pouch that holds nothing but spent casings. Like his gun, the man also spits out something from his mouth - snow.

Still maintaining his silent vigil, the man narrows his perceptive eyes at the scenery into which he's shot his rifle as he swiftly picks up all the spent casings from the snow, pockets them into a waist-borne pouch that carries nothing but empty bullet casings, and removes himself quietly from the scene, leaving no trace of himself behind.

* * *

"Well, that was...easy," Elizabeth Alter remarks nonchalantly as the three of them pause for a moment next to the side of a cliff that dips down into an isolated ravine. On the other side of the ravine is the tall, daunting side of a mountain, the beginning of what appears to be a small mountain range on this side of the Silva Gelida.

"I'm...not so sure what's so easy about this," Ritsuka groans herself, plopping down on her bottom to catch her breath. The terrain got noticeably worse a while ago, and all this angled walking up slopes and hillsides has done Ritsuka no favors.

"Well, I meant that in terms of enemies. We've only run into those Zed things so far, and we managed to avoid that Archer, so I'll consider that a win in my book," Liz shrugs. "And besides, weren't you the one who said that you were used to walking around a lot?"

"E-Even if I am, walking up hills and stuff for hours on end still gets tiring, you know? Can hardly blame me for that - whoa!"

Not waiting for her Master to finish her thought, Liz bends down and swoops Ritsuka back up to her feet.

"Don't wanna sit down like that in this weather," the Lancer warns in a low voice, signaling that she's not playing around. "You get tired in weather like this and fall asleep, you might never wake back up. Even if you're resistant to the weather for whatever reason and even if the weather's not quite _that _cold yet, that's not a chance I think any of us want to take. At least wait until we have some shelter to work with somewhere, wherever we can find some."

As Ritsuka sighs to herself and catches her breath standing up, Liz turns to her fellow Servant. "Jeannie, where is the data center exactly? Can we see it from here?"

Jeannie points up into the mountain range, which yields nothing that particularly looks like a data center or buildings at all. However, what _can _be seen is a frightening number of the black sentry towers like the ones they saw lifelessly guarding the first data center that they investigated dotting the landscape at various heights and locations.

"So somewhere in the mountain range itself, huh...I've gotta say, what the hell are those towers?" Liz frowns darkly at the sight of the tall towers.

"Entity identification unknown. However, munitions recognition processes suggest defensive artillery role."

"So they're cannon towers?"

"Most likely."

Liz grimaces hard. "Yeah, I'm not sure if we can go through an entire _mountain range _of those things...they've gotta be pretty strong, no?"

"Towers appear to be offline. They pose no threat."

"Yeah, we ran into a few of those already when we found our first data center," Ritsuka explains quickly. "We didn't tell you about that yet, did we? These ones look the same as the ones from before, so...they shouldn't attack us. Hopefully."

"Hmm. Well, if you say so...doesn't make me any less nervous, though, they certainly look like they can do some damage."

"Jeannie, what's the plan now? Are we gonna walk our way into these mountains?" the Chaldean Master asks her first Servant, who promptly nods.

"Foot travel currently the safest method of travel. Discrete and consistent."

"While that might be, these are the mountains we're walking into. So far we've just been walking through forest and maybe a few hills," Liz comes to Ritsuka's aid as the latter slumps against her new Lancer's side. "It's gonna take us just as much time to get to the data center from here as it took for us to get here from our HQ."

"Wait a minute, Liz! You can fly, right? I forgot about that!" Ritsuka brightens up instantly when she remembers this crucial detail about her Servant. "Can't you just fly and carry us two? Or would the two of us be too heavy for...you..."

Unfortunately, Ritsuka's speech decelerates when she looks up at Liz and notices an alarming drain of color from Liz's face.

"Er...ahem," Liz Alter scratches her head awkwardly as she looks off to the side to avoid eye contact. "I, uh...forgot to tell you to, but, uh..."

Ritsuka gawks at Liz. "...don't tell me..."

"Yeah. I lost the ability to fly." Liz chuckles awkwardly, trying her very best to pass it off as nothing special. "The most I can do is, like...glide or whatever. Just like in that one movie, uh...it was something about toys and stuff..."

But such efforts to lighten up the mood fail miserably as Liz realizes that Ritsuka's eyes have developed a very dead look in them.

_"I'm sorry, okay!? It's not like I MEANT to lose them, I-I just kinda lost them along the way somewhere, I don't know exactly when!" _Liz seizes her Master's shoulders and shakes her back and forth to mentally resuscitate her, but Ritsuka doesn't need the resuscitation and instead seizes her Lancer Servant back.

_"HOW DO YOU JUST **LOSE **THE ABILITY TO FLY!?" _Ritsuka bellows, beside herself with disbelief and going red in the face for it.

_"I DON'T KNOW, I JUST DID, OKAY! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT ME TO SAY!"  
_

Ritsuka resumes her dead-on-the-inside look in her eyes. "This...this might just be up there with Ishtar losing the Bull of Heaven back in Babylonia..." she laments to herself, but given that Liz is still right in her face, she hears this too.

"S-Something tells me that's a bigger diss to me than I realize..." Liz Alter grumbles awkwardly, relinquishing Ritsuka in the meantime.

Sighing while watching the antics of the other two, Jeannie clears her throat softly.

"Alternate travel method available," she announces. "Outcome highly unpredictable, but travel time may be reduced by up to 95%."

"Really!? What kind of idea do you have?" Ritsuka lights up a second time and bounds over to Jeannie, eager to hear her out.

In response, a huge black blade materializes to Jeannie's left. It's the same kind of blade that Jeannie used to ride straight into the group of Zeds from earlier, and it's clearly big enough to allow someone to stand or even sit on its flat side.

Realizing this, Ritsuka first stares at the floating greatsword, then over to Jeannie, then back to the sword, then back to Jeannie again. Liz, for her part, effectively remains totally silent as well.

There is, as difficult as it is to detect, the tiniest of smiles on Jeannie's face, and this time, Ritsuka knows she isn't even trying to hide it.

"Get on."


	13. Landing Zone

A certain girl's hysterical screaming is audible across almost the entire mountain range, and in some parts of it, minor avalanches are triggered, throwing down sizeable amounts of snow that go tumbling to the ravine below.

In a scene rather familiar to certain events that transpired during Ritsuka's endeavor in the Camelot Singularity, the Master, gripping onto Liz Alter for dear life, bawls her lungs out while Liz also screams at the top of her lungs, just with the opposite emotion of thrill, as the latter grips tightly onto the side of the colossal Blacklight sword that Jeannie has yeeted with much of the strength she could muster with her small body.

"Hahaha, this is great! It's like I know how to fly again!" Liz shrieks, making sure to clutch Ritsuka tight so that she doesn't slip away and fall down into the mountain range prematurely.

Ritsuka just screams harder in response.

_**"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA - "**_

Liz's fun in the air draws to an inevitable close quickly when the Blacklight's trajectory dips drastically, guiding itself towards Jeannie's preset coordinates for impact, so the Lancer prepares accordingly by acrobatically raising her feet onto the sword on which she's been straddling with Ritsuka in tow and leaps off, giving herself a reasonable amount of time to steer clear of the sword's impact zone so that she and her Master can land safely somewhere. True to her claim, thankfully, Elizabeth produces a pair of surprisingly large, vampiric wings that sprout magically from above the back of her pelvis, which immediately get to work flapping heavily to counteract the force of gravity and decelerate the two of them to a nice and slow rate down to the ground. Liz watches as their ride, Jeannie's massive Blacklight, which is roughly the size of a ping pong table if you stretched out its lengths a bit, crashes into the side of an unfortunate cannon tower, and to her gawking surprise, the blade erupts out the other side towards the bottom with a terrific tearing and gnashing of steel on steel and punches into the snow with impunity, kicking up a healthy amount of snow to signal its final resting place.

"...that kid...just how strong is she...?" Liz can't help but mutter this to herself out loud, narrowing her eyes warily at the calmed black blade ominously jutting out from the ground in the distance one last time before it disappears behind the rocky mountainside, compelling her to focus on her own landing for her own sake and that of her Master. Speaking of her Master, she's still screaming like a deranged lunatic even though they've clearly stopped hurtling through the air at over seventy miles an hour, so Liz taps the side of Ritsuka's head firmly like she's tapping the top of a bongo. "Oi, Master, shut up! _Elég legyen már, _we're here already!"

The hard taps brings Ritsuka back to focus as she realizes that Liz is speaking the truth, which is a surprise by itself already, and the two of them touch down unscathed back onto the snow.

"S-Sorry. That brought back some, uh..._memories." _Ritsuka heaves emphatically, catching her breath and still amazed that her lungs even had the capacity to let her scream that long.

"Yeah, no kidding. You sounded like the normal me if you tossed her into a broom closet, told her that you tossed the key, and left her there for a minute."

"I couldn't help it, okay? That was basically Arash Airlines 2.0!"

"Arash Airlines? The hell's that?"

"Ugh..." Ritsuka rolls her eyes uncomfortably. "Basically, back during one of the other Singularities, there was this Archer Servant who convinced us that he'd sent us to a village really quickly, and - "

"That was basically how he sent you?"

Ritsuka groans again. "I swear Jeannie knows stuff about me somehow. You saw the look in her face before she threw us over here, didn't you?"

"Maybe, maybe not, I was having more fun pretending I could actually fly again," Liz Alter just shrugs.

"Oh, speaking of flying, if you could glide like that, why can't you just fly, seriously!"

"Ahaha...er, well, I think it's actually because my wings just can't support my own body weight anymore. My flying was never really _that _good, you know, you can ask the normal me if you don't believe me, she can barely fly on her own too."

"But you said just before we got here that you didn't know the reason."

"More like I'm normally too embarrassed to admit that that's why I think I can't fly, y'know?" Liz mumbles out of the side of her lips, looking away with a guilty look on her face. "I'm _definitely _not gonna say something like that in front of Jeannie, she already doesn't like me as is. No reason to give her any extra ammo, even if this one's just marshmallows."

"Does this have anything to do with being an idol? Or used to?"

"K-Kind of...? I already told you that I've given up on trying to become an idol, so it's not like I need to be a huge stickler about maintaining a certain weight, but..."

Ritsuka extends a hand and pats Liz reassuringly on the shoulder. "Fight on, comrade. You are not alone," she declares, raising a thumbs up for Liz to see.

_"I'm not FAT, okay! I exercise regularly and do my best to stay fit!" _Liz bawls back, angrily slapping the snow behind her with her large tail.

"So you _are _weight-conscious still! Habits die hard, huh?" Ritsuka grins smugly and is immediately subjected to another round of shoulder shaking by her new Lancer, who, with two bright red cheeks, thrashes her Master harmlessly back and forth.

**"It's - not - like that! It's not my fault I can't fly anymore because my wings just can't support my weight as I got older!" **Liz pleads with her Master to understand with an oddly satisfying mixture of desperation and irritation, but the longer Liz goes, the more her tone turns strained. "Seriously, I've never been able to find an answer for that either, that's the only conclusion I was able to come up with on my own! It's not like I've relied on flying as like a primary method of transportation, I just...never found out...!"

Sensing that this may be a much more personal issue than she realizes, Ritsuka drops her teasing. "Sorry, I...didn't realize this would, uh, rub you the wrong way."

"Well, it's not that it 'rubs me the wrong way', but it's been something that's bothered me for a long time," Liz quickly composes herself, also realizing that she's making her Master worry about her. "It's nothing huge, so don't worry about it. But to answer you seriously, I'm not lying when I'm saying that I can't fly, and the most I can really do is glide like I did just now. If I really could fly, I wouldn't have bothered walking with you and Jeannie all the way here, I would've just flown. The normal me can fly even while carrying another person, I know that for a fact."

Clearing her throat, Liz Alter grabs her long lance out of thin air and gives it a quick twirl as she surveys their surroundings, as does Ritsuka. They've landed at a rocky divide between two cannon towers, both of whom have their turrets facing sullenly downwards, like all of the turrets they've seen thus far. The ground is very rocky, consisting of mainly pebbles, small rocks, and the occasional boulder here and there, all with a fine layer of snow resting on top and with more falling down from the dreary winter sky. Ritsuka can't help but notice the abrupt absence of trees and other foliage, but that's to be expected now that they're in a mountain range.

"By the way, where's Jeannie...?" Ritsuka asks. Her own question echoes into her ears and through her brain, causing her chest to tighten up at the rising dread of the thought, since this basically means they've left Jeannie behind to fend for herself...not that that should be of any concern to the girl in question.

But to her relief, Liz simply points up into the sky behind her. "On her way."

Sure enough, the child Servant is soaring down through the sky, riding her own Blacklight with her two small feet planted against the flat side of the blade, and within moments she, too, crash-lands her flying sword into the slope further behind Liz and slams into the rocky ground next to them, as if performing a dynamic superhero entrance.

"Perfect landing, ten out of ten," Liz applauds the beautiful landing sequence lightly, though her applause is little more than touching the tips of her fingers and palms together repeatedly. Rocks of all sizes that have been dislodged by the sword's crash landing are now rolling to a stop nearby.

"Praise from Lancer unnecessary but appreciated," Jeannie replies mechanically, tussling her hair to get it out of her face. "Objective Bravo is within two hundred meters of this location; fastest route is over this slope." She points to the rocky slope, the same one that her Blacklight has crashed into.

"Simple enough...if we didn't wake up some of the locals," Liz remarks, turning and raising her lance towards Ritsuka, who spins around to see piles of smoke and ash swirl up from the rocky ground all along the divide.

Reacting swiftly, Jeannie summons for a second time the personal Blacklight escort sword that resumes its station revolving around Ritsuka before also producing her special bow again. Before several of the enemy Zeds can fully materialize, she quickly nocks a standard Blacklight blade and lets it fly at the nearest such target, slaying the spawning monster where it is birthed, and a few swords also pop out of the surrounding spawns too, eliminating them altogether.

"Hey, don't steal all the kills!" Liz laughs, hurling her lance at another Zed like a javelin now that they have all fully materialized and are advancing on the group to attack. The spear cleanly impales its target through the head, but amazingly, as Ritsuka realizes at the absence of Liz next to her, the Lancer catches her own spear after it's slain its victim, as if she's simply teleported to its location, and swiftly butchers the surrounding four Zeds next to the first with two elegant swings of her weapon.

As Jeannie silently and methodically picks off Zeds next to her with her Blacklight bow, Ritsuka watches Liz Alter fight up close and personal to the monsters. She can see obvious shades of the normal Elizabeth Bathory she knows back in Chaldea in the way Liz Alter combats the enemy: spear thrusts and swings mixed gratuitously with tail attacks that smash and slap their targets. But as her older age would suggest, Liz Alter's combat ability is clearly refined: her spear handling is tight and crisp, unlike the showy, flamboyant, and often sloppy spearmanship that the normal Liz would demonstrate, and Liz Alter's tail even has the ability to grab enemies and either use them as makeshift clubs to bat away other opponents or toss them like projectiles, something Ritsuka has not yet seen the normal Liz do. At one point the Master watches the tip of the tail even decapitate a bladed Zed trying to sneak up behind the Lancer.

Between Liz Alter's sweeping ability and Jeannie's marksmanship, the initial wave of monsters that have spawned to greet them is obliterated less than three minutes after Liz announces their arrival, and Liz Alter returns to her allies to regroup.

"I take it that neither of us know this area, right?" Liz asks Jeannie, who nods in return. "Then let's assume this entire area is hostile. Master, be on your guard, this can't be the last of them."

Mentally preparing herself, Ritsuka follows her Servants as they take the lead scaling the slope towards the cannon tower before them.


	14. Descent

After another hour of searching -

"Location confirmed," Jeannie finally announces with her usual icy and quiet voice that in no way should belong to a small child like her, gazing downwards towards their newly discovered Data Center Bravo.

"Ugh..."

Ritsuka, stumbling over a few overturned metal cases that may have contained weapons at some point, stops herself next to Jeannie as she catches her breath again with her hands on her knees. This past hour of searching by foot has been brutal even for someone as well traveled as her; while she's no stranger to mountain climbing and scaling, all of the times that she's done so have at least been on mountain trails and the like, as rough and steep as they may have been. No such luxury was afforded for her here, for the terrain has truly been nothing but rolling hills, cliffs, and slopes made of nothing but rock, pebble, and gravel. At the very least it doesn't seem to be snowing here in the mountain range as hard as in the forest that they were in before reaching the mountains, but no matter how it's put, the Master is exhausted.

The quiet pat of a long steel lance resting abruptly against her shoulder, Elizabeth Alter speaks no words yet as she follows Jeannie's gaze. The eerie silence from her is startling enough to make Ritsuka snap out of her exhaustion, if only briefly, to turn around and see what's up. There's a look on her face that Ritsuka hasn't seen on it yet - in fact, she's never seen a look quite like this on any face of Elizabeth's that she knows.

A look of pure seriousness.

"Jeannie," Liz Alter finally murmurs, breaking her uncharacteristic silence after taking in the view sprawling before the group. "Where in the hell did you lead us?"

"Data Center Bravo."

"That so?" The Lancer slowly puts her free hand on her right hip. "What the fuck is a data center doing in a shithole like this?"

Only now realizing that she's the only one who isn't seeing where they are now, Ritsuka turns around to look down below.

Standing on a large curved awning, Ritsuka, Liz, and Jeannie stand before a titanic circular descent, almost like a man-made sinkhole roughly the same area as three American football stadiums put together. Old, long-defunct cargo elevators remain where they have last stopped on the various sectioned floors of the sinkhole, and while snow dominates the landscape on the top floor on which the Master and her Servants stand, plant growth and debris also thrive here, along with the second and third floors down, but naturally not much more beyond that due to the decreasing levels of sunlight, where debris reigns supreme alone. The sinkhole goes further down than what they can see, so their visibility is cut off at the sixth floor downwards, and beyond that, the angling of the current sunlight, if you could even call it sunlight with how long it's been snowing without stopping, gives opportunity to pitch black darkness to rule.

Subconsciously and reflexively swallowing some of her saliva back in nervousness, Ritsuka takes a slow step backwards away from the edge of the awning. This sinkhole is so massive that she's getting slight vertigo just from glancing down at the third floor, never mind trying to look _straight _down, and this is coming from someone who's both flown in the air and been to great heights before, though usually not by natural means.

"Current location's description matches intel extracted from Data Center Alpha. This is the place," Jeannie repeats for clarity's sake, in case Liz for whatever reason doesn't want to believe it.

Ritsuka notices Liz slowly lowering her lance off her shoulder.

"I should've expected this," the Lancer broods softly. Her voice has assumed a tone that Ritsuka in a million years never would have thought Elizabeth was capable of producing, a kind of tone that makes you feel like you're about to get stabbed in the chest from behind.

"Explain."

"This place isn't normal. This is - we're supposed to be in a fucking _mountain range_, for God's sake," Liz utters. Her voice is rising slowly, but it's definitely rising - a clear indication that Liz feels strongly about this location in a way that neither Jeannie nor Ritsuka fully understand. "Why is a place like _this _here in the first place?"

"Liz, I don't...I don't get it, is there...something wrong with this place?" Ritsuka asks warily, half-afraid that Liz will lash out at her, too. The Lancer does slowly turn around to face her Master, but her eyes shed their serious, almost murderous edge to them upon gazing at her.

"I'll be completely honest with you, but I don't have a good feeling about this place, Master," Liz answers as calmly as she can, beginning with a big sigh of stress. "The fact that you're seeing me stress out like this should be proof of that. Just looking down, I can tell this place...this place is just gonna be nothing but bad news."

"But...regardless, it's...if Jeannie says we have to go down there, I've got to follow her."

Clicking her tongue in frustration, Liz opens her mouth as if to speak, but nothing is heard as she purses her lips closed again, instead running her fingers through her dark pink bangs. Her sharp blue eyes pace down at the ground, looking at one piece of debris to the next, a flood of thoughts passing through her mind as she tries to determine what she should do.

Perhaps more interestingly, Jeannie, too, is gazing at Liz Alter, as if waiting for her to speak further, but after waiting for a minute, Jeannie determines that Liz's current train of thought is too convoluted to be sorted out soon and takes the lead.

"Data Center Bravo is located at the base of this structure," Jeannie alerts her group. "Descent is mandatory. Recommend immediate departure."

Squeezing her eyes tightly shut for a moment, Liz gathers herself and nods firmly.

"Yeah...that'll be for the best, just sticking together."

"Okay, but before we go, I really wanna know what you're thinking, Liz," Ritsuka asks assertively, or as assertively as she can while she's still trying to catch her breath. "Do you know about this place already? What's on your mind about this place?"

"No, I haven't been here at all, otherwise I'd tell you exactly why I feel so uneasy about it," Liz denies. "Maybe it's just my old claustrophobia acting up again, but..."

"But?"

Liz shakes her head. "No point in worrying about it up here. We'll deal with it when we get down there. Whatever it is."

Walking up to the edge of the awning, Liz dissipates her lance for convenience's sake to get another glimpse of just how far down this man-made sinkhole goes before turning back around to offer her hands to both Jeannie and Ritsuka.

"It'll be faster for me to carry you two and just glide down rather than have to find our way down, but as we're going down, Jeannie, you'll have to scan our surroundings so that you can lead us back up top," Liz instructs. "Any problems?"

Jeannie shakes her head. "Formulated identical procedure, this unit is in full agreement."

So Jeannie climbs up on Liz to sit on her shoulders while Ritsuka sheepishly stands in front of Liz so that the latter can carry her in her arms, since the other alternative would be to have her Master physically hang onto her leg or arm, which, given the sheer depth of this sinkhole, would more than likely tire Ritsuka out very quickly, especially after the past hour of mountain range travel.

"Okay...we're going."

Prompting the other two so that they can prepare themselves, Liz Alter nimbly gets back on the awning edge and hops right off without hesitation, since her sprouted wings again immediately take action by safely gliding everyone slowly down the sinkhole. As per Liz's instructions, Jeannie magically scans their surroundings, with Liz even rotating slowly to allow Jeannie a full panoramic view of sinkhole as they descend into the darkness below, despite the fact that Jeannie doesn't really need it.

Initially gazing at the walls and the lower floors of the sinkhole, Ritsuka, clutching her personal Blacklight blade that's been with her for the past hour that now rests for the time being against her chest, glances up at Liz again.

"If you're worried that the stuff that happened from the first data center'll happen here too..."

"It's not the monster/zombie stuff I'm worried about. Those aren't enough to give me the creeps," Liz explains quietly, her fierce blue eyes positively glaring at anything they set themselves on. "Something about the atmosphere here...and I don't mean on a scientific level, just the way this place feels...it's not right."

The girls now reach the threshold between light and dark, and as they transition into darkness, Ritsuka nervously glances up at the upper floors for one last glimpse of the light before darkness swallows them up for the time being.

"When we were at the first data center, there were some...creepy stuff we saw there, too, that I didn't tell you about," Ritsuka sighs quietly. "There were a few doors that we opened that...that had some freaky writing behind it. It was all static, and it seemed like if you walked through them, you'd enter a whole 'nother dimension. Maybe something like that we'll find here?"

"Again, Master, I don't know. I just don't know what to make of this place..."

The normally outgoing, talkative Liz Alter can turn stoic and tense in a drop of a hat - this doesn't sit well with Ritsuka at all. Mental holdover from the normal Elizabeth Bathory aside, Liz saying that that even she doesn't know what to make of a place like this is a scary thought, because ever since Liz joined their group, she's been the upbeat one always starting conversations and getting to know them better. The one thing that Ritsuka can fall back on, though is the steady, strong heartbeat of her new Lancer Servant beating against her right ear. In their descent into potential madness or worse, such an audible heartbeat is the one thing that promises success on this particular endeavor...or at the very least, reassurance that they'll be able to get back out all in one piece each.


	15. Objective Bravo

The darkness into which they've plunged themselves is cruelly oppressive, squeezing their eyes with nothing but the color of void. The personal Blacklight that Jeannie has bestowed upon her Master to safeguard her has shut off its own ambient light on Jeannie's orders, in case there were possible enemies in the awnings and rafters around them as they lowered further into the sinkhole, and the last thing they want is to reveal their own positions as clear as day in pitch darkness to enemies who may or may not even be here.

If there was a way for the human body to suffocate just by losing sight, this would be it - it's as if there's something different about this darkness than the others Ritsuka has seen before. It's not just the kind of darkness where you put your hand up in front of your face and still not be able to see it, it's a kind that even seems to cut off your physical senses, because Ritsuka finds herself so fixated by the creeping fear she feels from the ambient darkness that she momentarily forgets completely that Liz is holding her as they descend.

Is it because this darkness is artificial? No, it's probably because this is the first time that she's experienced true physical darkness, where there is simply no light to be seen anywhere to the naked eye. Ritsuka would have been better off not knowing what full darkness looked like, but for better or for worse, she does now.

After what seems like an eternity, no doubt partially caused by the asphyxiating darkness that's swallowed them into the depths of this artificial sinkhole, Ritsuka feels an abrupt stop of Liz Alter's feet landing softly against the ground. Jeannie also hops off and lands quietly next to the Lancer, who sets her Master down carefully, making sure that she isn't setting her Master down on something or somewhere dangerous.

"I thought my night vision was gonna be good enough for this place...guess I couldn't be more wrong about that," Liz murmurs, chuckling to herself in an attempt to lighten up the mood, even if only by a little bit. "Jeannie, you happen to have a light or something?"

Jeannie replies not with words, but with a silent cone of dim red light that shines from the center of a Blacklight sword's hilt that hovers over her shoulder. It's far from ideal for a light, but the darkness is such that even dim red light is welcome for any semblance of visibility. She does the same with Ritsuka's personal Blacklight, which resumes its ambient light functions for some added area visibility.

As the child Servant adds more Blacklights to increase their coverage, the unknown abyss around them is slowly revealed, piece by piece, and perhaps not surprisingly, Ritsuka and Liz Alter both begin to grimace at what they start to see.

"Jeannie," the Lancer whispers, slowly grasping her lance as her eyes strain at what sprawls before them, "what...is going on here?"

The floor. The walls. The containers. The debris. The glass, both whole and broken. The panels. Even with only red light to help them see, it's obvious what's smeared heavily across all of these things.

And just like the previous data center, blood isn't the only disturbing sight to behold in abundance: more human skeletons are strewn across the ground floor of the artificial sinkhole, in all kinds of shapes and sizes...and pieces. The skeletons that remain whole are the lucky ones, it looks like, because those that aren't are missing entire limbs or, frighteningly, entire halves. Many of the ones that have been split in half don't have their missing halves readily in sight, and even if they are, with how many half-skeletons there are, who knows which half belongs to which. Ritsuka doesn't want to dwell on how exactly they ended up like that.

Luckily for her, she doesn't have to, because something else captivates her instead, and not in a good way: the sheer amount of skeletons on this ground floor. In the previous data center, the skeletons were more or less concentrated at the entrance, but here, there is no such logic to the bodies. Mounds of bones, collected together here and there, sit gruesomely silently, in various sizes and density, and with no discernible pattern to them. In between, individual skeletons lie, and that's before counting all the individual bones that are discarded about.

In an attempt to ease herself next to Liz defensively, Ritsuka accidentally bumps her foot against what can only be a bone, and it lets out an almost metallic thunk as the back of her heel bumps it aside. A sudden chill shoots up her spine when she realizes what she's done, looking down at her feet and noticing a whole skeleton that's lucky enough not to have been torn to shreds like many of the others around them.

"Jeannie...? Please, answer us, where...where are we? What is _this _place now...?" Ritsuka croaks out, her voice starting to crack. She thought she was used to the sight of human skeletons - clearly she's not used to seeing _this many _all at once.

She and Liz turn slowly to Jeannie, who, as usual, displays no shift in expression, even in this subterranean hell on earth.

"Data Center Bravo," she answer simply. "Commencing search."

"Do you even know where to go?" Liz asks incredulously, motioning to their Master to follow closely as Jeannie begins walking off towards one of the four main cargo doors that they face straight ahead, beyond this field of human skeletons.

"Precise target location coordinates unknown, manual searching required. Master, this unit is searching for a terminal room similar to that of Data Center Alpha," Jeannie explains curtly, stepping over a decapitated skeleton as her Blacklights illuminating their path dimly escort the group together.

"We're not splitting up, if that's what you're suggesting," Liz quickly retorts, knocking aside another skeleton with her left foot. The metallic clatter of bone and the subsequent rattling of the bones against the hard metal floor echo through the normally silent ground floor of the silo, which spooks Ritsuka harder than she anticipates.

"Clarify."

"Weren't you just asking Master to go off and look for this place alone? That's insane! In a place like this?"

"Incorrect assumption; however, dividing the group to cover more ground is indeed more efficient. Lancer, escort Master to those two loading doors to our left," Jeannie instructs coldly, pointing in the direction of her indicated entrances. "This unit shall search the rest. Blacklights possess a communication feature that relays back to this unit, so in case of emergency, we will maintain contact."

Liz gazes suspiciously at the Blacklight blades acting as their searchlights. "What _can't _these things do...?" she mutters to herself, but quietly so that Jeannie doesn't hear and offer a quip back. "Okay, Master, let's go. The faster we can get this over with, the less we need to be down in this gutter."

Ritsuka nods fervently, agreeing wholeheartedly. She's also glad that despite having to split up, they can still keep in touch with each other thanks to the Blacklight swords. At least they have these things going for them that'll make their experience down in the abyss a bit better, but of course, the best remedy to the permanent sensation of creeping dread that this place induces is to simply not be here in the first place.

Once Liz Alter and Ritsuka are safely within the confines of the leftmost tunnel leading further into the silo, the former glances behind them, as if to ensure that nothing is stalking them, including Jeannie.

"You know what this room looks like, right?" Liz confirms with her Master, who nods back.

"It's...it's a big room. Not as big as, you know, the main floor that we just came from, or whatever it's called..." Ritsuka claps her cheeks softly to try to shake off her nerves. "There's like a big central tower, with uh, four computers around it, basically."

"Hm, sounds pretty specific, which is good. Hopefully we'll run into it sooner rather than later...or that Jeannie runs into it soon, too. How are you holding up?"

"I'm...I'm fine. I think."

"If you have to say 'I think' to a question like that, I question just how fine you are."

"Ugh...okay, I'm...not really doing that fine." Ritsuka hangs her head uncomfortably.

"Well, if this'll make you feel better, you're handling this much better than I was afraid you were," Liz says, offering her Master a reassuring smile and a pat on the head. "If this place can give me the creeps, a normal human being would've been puking their goddamn brains out back there. You're a tough nut to crack, that much is for sure."

"Eh...it's, it's only because I'd already been to a lot of other Singularities and...seen similar things," Ritsuka sighs softly. She feels a bit embarrassed at Liz patting her head, but in a place as creepy and potentially dangerous as this, she'll take any reassurance she can get. "But obviously not to this degree. This's just...I don't even know what to say about it, where to start."

"Same. You'd think for someone like me, back when the normal me used to bathe in literal gallons of blood every morning because she thought it was good 'skin care', seeing something like this would be no big deal, and it shouldn't be, but..." Liz shakes her head in frustration. "I don't know. Sorry for constantly repeating this, but...something about this place...it's just off."

The tunnel into which they've walked doesn't last long, and not long after they've entered it are they spit out on the other side into a connecting room of sorts. Thick, reinforced sets of glass windows line both walls on either side, and behind them are what appear to be containment cells. The usual debris is piled about on the floor: chairs, a few tables, pieces of rubble and debris that have fallen from the degrading ceiling, and rotting paper. For one reason or another, some of the lights in this room are still functional, albeit barely, so the escorting Blacklights contextually turn off their own ambient lighting for the time being to save power.

And, but of course, dried blood is splattered against most of the windows. The only one that has no blood - is the one that's been broken open.

Liz Alter quietly investigates each of the windows and the containment cells that they present, with Ritsuka sticking close by and also investigating, since what else is there for her to do. Every bloody window holds behind it a single skeleton too, and eerily, only the broken window with no blood on it has no such skeleton.

"...Master, something bothers you about these windows, doesn't it?" Liz projects slowly, glancing to her side at Ritsuka, who nods with a terse look in her eyes. "Good to know my Master is perceptive too. That simplifies things..."

Ritsuka peers back through the window nearest to them down at the skeleton inside. It's slumped against the left wall, with its skull resting with its empty eye sockets staring at the other side of the cell away from her. Probably for the best - Ritsuka doesn't know how she'd handle a skeleton staring straight into her soul at such a close distance.

"Master, let's move. Hopefully what we've seen here doesn't come back to bite us..."

Liz Alter and Ritsuka proceed through the sliding double doors that creak open weakly, due to who knows how many years of neglect they've endured to finally service the first people they've seen in that amount of time.

But as soon as the doors clap weakly shut after them, the skeleton that Ritsuka was gazing at last twitches a little. After a few moments, it twitches again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Soon, the twitches become movement - and before long, the small skeleton is able to ease itself up to its feet, which heave forward slowly towards the window.

And upon bumping into the window, which stops it in its slow tracks, the skeleton begins to knock its bare cranium against the window. It's only a small bump, but it keeps doing this, over and over and over...

...until it's joined by four more identical skeletons, all standing at their respective windows, all thumping their skulls against their windows in weak unison...


	16. Ambush

"So this is where they went. This place never fails to scare me even more than before, does it..."

"Scary? C'mon, this's just a dreamworld. Can't hurt'cha if it doesn't exist, right? Oh come on, don't give me that look, that was just a joke."

"What's not a joke is that they took their Master down there with them. I'm half considering going down there myself."

"What, scared that the Master'll get herself killed down there? There hasn't been quite enough character development to necessitate that sentiment, I don't think."

"Of course not, we haven't even met yet. But we might have to, depending on how well that Lancer and Jeannie handle things down there. Or not."

"You can go down there if you want, I'll stay right here."

"Why? Are _you _scared all of a sudden? Kind of out of character for you, isn't it?"

"If I say that I like listening to people's screams echo from far away as they get slaughtered, then it isn't."

"Ugh, you and your bloodlust..."

"Oh, fucking _excuse me, __**look who's talking."**_

"Actually, this gets me thinking..."

"'Bout what?"

"If the first two data centers are like this, you think the third one that Jeannie's trying to track down will be the one we think it is?"

"Did it really take you that long to register that? Weren't _you _supposed to be the smart one between us?"

"Sorry that I'm diligent and I like to double check what I know or think I know. You should second-guess yourself more often, it'll keep you out of a lot of trouble."

"Hard pass, miss me with that shit, bitch. Ain't my style, you know how it is."

"Better than anyone else, unfortunately. So? Then what should we do while they're down there? It's not like they can get out any other way."

"Hm, good question. I _am _a bit curious about these cannon towers, these weren't supposed to be here, right?"

"Right, they're add-ons. I don't know where Jeannie downloaded them, or if she didn't download them herself, where they came from..."

"Might as well check 'em out while we're waiting. Might even get to kill a few Zeds while we're at it, too."

"Seriously, is killing all you ever think about?"

"Like I said, you know me, haha ~ "

* * *

The deliberate, methodical steps of Ritsuka's boots and Liz Alter's shoes echo into a connecting hub that leads to three more sections of the floor. The silence is so great prior to their arrival that even their footsteps sound alarmingly deafening, even when they're carefully taking their time and watching their surroundings for any potential hostile contact. However, the footsteps coming from the Lancer soon stop, and Ritsuka's cease shortly thereafter to allow the two to scan this hub's interior.

The room is about the size of a large conference room that could seat between twenty to thirty people, and a few old, ragged bulletin boards with pinned sheets of paper, diagrams, and miscellaneous mathematics hang on the walls on either side. The usual floor-dwelling debris like old boxes, overturned metal crates, and discarded cargo carts are present too, but something else also dwells on the floor in this hub room with them.

"...I...don't like where this is going," Liz mutters through clenched teeth, eyeing this anomaly down on the floor before them.

Five skeletons just like the ones they saw inside the windowed containment cells in one of the previous rooms are lying on the floor of this hub. Three of them are sprawled out in different positions across the middle of the floor, while two of them are either lying with its back against the wall on the floor or slumped against the wall like the one skeleton Ritsuka looked at before.

The Chaldean Master nervously eyes the small skeletons motionlessly laying on the floor in front of them, her personal Blacklight poising itself over her shoulder and ready fling itself at an enemy should Ritsuka deem it necessary.

"Th-They're just skeletons...right?" she asks in a very small voice.

"I'd love to say that they are, but...I don't think so." Liz glances at Ritsuka quickly. "These are the same kinds of skeletons as the ones we saw in that one room we passed just like a few minutes ago or something. Not to mention, at the ground floor of this place where we landed, there were tons of skeletons out there, and you saw that a lot of 'em were torn up, like they were missing limbs and stuff like that."

Nodding in confirmation, Ritsuka still keeps her eyes glued on the skeletons.

"So let's say that something terrible happened down here like what happened in that first data center that you two found, where a lot of people in here got killed by something that ripped 'em to shreds. Why haven't we seen any skeletons like that down here yet? The maimed ones, I mean. There should've been people down here too, no? Certainly looks like people were down here at some point, doing who knows what." Liz nods towards the bulletin boards on either side of them. "And that's not all. You know how I kicked aside one of those skulls right after we landed down here? It didn't feel like I was kicking a normal human skull. It felt more...metallic."

The metallic _thunk _of Liz punting the skull aside fills Ritsuka's eardrums as if she just did it again.

"So these skeletons are...different? What does...what could _that _mean...?" Ritsuka wonders aloud. "But they're still just skeletons, right? It's not like they'll do anything..."

Liz raises her lance up to her shoulder. "Might as well check just to be safe."

"Wait, Liz, what a -"

With a brief but sharp inhale, the Lancer chucks her weapon again like a javelin down at the closest skeleton, piercing the skull cleanly and pinning it down into the metal floor.

Confirming Liz's suspicions, a weak but unmistakable crackle of electricity and spurt of robotic buzzing is emitted from the skull in response to Liz's pre-emptive attack. But more than the electricity, the strained robotic buzzing is what catches both girls' attention more, because it sounds...

"...high-pitched?" Liz wonders aloud, becoming gripped with another wave of bewilderment. "Do skeletons these days sound like that...?"

Ritsuka can't answer the question though, because now, as if in response to the attack, an alarm begins to sound through not just the hub room that they're in, but throughout the entire facility, by the sounds of it. The alarm isn't loud at all, just some light beeping in the background, but nevertheless it doesn't fail to send more chills down Ritsuka's spine in dread of what they'll need to deal with next.

To comply with the alarm, the other four skeletons slowly get up to their feet, and Liz and Ritsuka watch them with full alert, anticipating them to retaliate. Once they are, they start shuffling towards their attackers, accelerating more and more as their bodies recover their knowledge of physical movement after all this time laying dormant on this floor.

Seizing the initiative back, Liz Alter surges forward and bashes one of the four approaching skeletons across its left cheek with a backhanded blow with her left fist. The blow, coming from a Servant like Elizabeth, launches the skeleton across the room to Liz's left and causes it to slam against the wall with an alarming thud, followed by a softer thud of it crashing down to the ground. Ritsuka's personal Blacklight, marking these approaching skeletons as hostile, also flies forward, striking the nearest skeleton on the top of its right shoulder and cutting off its right arm.

Not wanting to feel like complete dead weight, as these enemies appear to be at least manageable even for her, Ritsuka raises her right hand, aiming it like a handgun, and fires off two simple Gandr shots at the skeleton furthest away, as her Blacklight blade and Liz are quickly dispatching of the others, reducing them to mere pieces of what they originally were. But to Ritsuka's dismay, her Gandr shots merely bounce off the bones of her target skeleton, and while they cause it to stagger backwards a bit, it appears that dealing actual damage has failed. Liz picks up a 2x4 off the floor and simply chucks it at the last skeleton, getting the wooden board jammed right through the skeleton's ribcage, and Jeannie's Blacklights that have joined the fight deliver the coup de grace, decapitating it swiftly and rendering it motionless again like before.

"So _that's _what was giving me the creeps coming in here," Liz sighs heavily, eyeing the bony mess that they've made. "Or maybe there's something worse the further in we go, who knows. Either way, this is some next-level messed up shit on our hands, huh?"

Ritsuka, having checked the doors behind them to make sure they aren't getting flanked by more enemies, spins towards Liz. "What's even going on here? Why did these skeletons just suddenly get up and start attacking us?"

"No idea. Though I suspect someone we know might..." Liz motions at one of the Blacklight swords hovering around them for escort duty. "Hey, one of you guys, get us in contact with Jeannie."

To Liz's silent surprise, since she only half-expected this to work, one of the blades indeed floats forward, blinking its red lights as though making a call to its progenitor, and within a moment, Jeannie's digitized voice feeds through to them.

_"Sitrep."_

"Jeannie, we just got attacked by these skeletons, they're the same as some of the ones we saw outside at the bottom of the silo where we landed. Why the fuck did they attack us? What the hell are they?"

_"Enemy signatures unknown, this unit has also encountered hostile contact with identical enemy type. Consider all contacts hostile and continue mission profile."_

"You're _sure_ that you have no idea whatsoever about these skeletons?"

_"Negative."_

Liz scowls deeply as the Blacklight in front of her stops its blinking red lights, perhaps to indicate that the call is now terminated.

"Don't believe her, Master. She knows something about this place, about these skeleton things - she probably won't tell me since she obviously doesn't trust me, so it'll have to be up to you to find out what these things are," Liz determines tersely, willing her spear back into her right hand.

"Well, that might be true, that Jeannie knows a few things about these skeletons, but..."

"But?"

"I don't think she fully distrusts you. If that were the case, she would've had me follow her instead, and sent you off on your own to search alone."

Liz narrows her eyes. "Or she purposely had you come with me so that she can search for whatever she's looking for on her own and keep secret whatever she doesn't want to show us."

"But she didn't act that way last ti - " Ritsuka stops herself short when she realizes that the first Data Center was much smaller than this silo. "Er, n-never mind, but, but still - "

"Hold it, we've got company," Liz interrupts, nodding at the door straight ahead. "More of these guys. Let's just try to find this room first and then talk the rest of this out."

Ritsuka freezes up at Liz Alter's warning. If more of these skeletons are activating to come attack them thanks to the alarm, then doesn't that mean...?

"Liz, do you think...how many skeletons like this do you think were back at the bottom of the silo?" the Master asks hoarsely.

The Lancer just groans in great annoyance.


	17. Ulterior Motives

The shattering of a skeleton whose bones snap off each other upon a terrible impact against a wall echoes through another useless room that Ritsuka and Liz Alter are investigating. The alarm that auto-activated about thirty minutes ago still has not shut off, and all the while they have been running into more and more skeletons that have seemingly been waiting for them in every new area they stumble into.

"There's just no end to these guys, is there?" Liz clicks her tongue in annoyance while her spear cuts down another handful of them at once, with Ritsuka in tow. "At least they're easy to deal with..."

Having forgone her own rudimentary self-defense magic, Ritsuka is instead instructing her personal Blacklight blade in attacking enemies in such a way that will directly support Liz, like covering her flanks and blind spots. She noticed that the blade Jeannie assigned to her personally would attack enemies that she herself looked directly at, and that it's only this particular sword that demonstrated this behavior, so she's been gladly assisting Lancer in covering her six.

"There're only new ones in places we haven't been to yet. We've doubled back through a few rooms before and we didn't run into more," Ritsuka points out.

"Hm, that's true. But still, that doesn't change the fact that since we need to search all these rooms to find the one you're looking for, we'll run into a whole lot more of these bastards."

"Take it easy, then. We have Jeannie's swords doing a lot of the work for us..."

Ritsuka beckons forward at the swords ripping apart the last few skeletons in the room. Now that these internal rooms have a bit of lighting that they can work with, the swords can devote themselves wholly to attacking.

"It's...it was good that Jeannie gave us these things to work with," Liz breathes heavily, wiping her brow of sweat as the swords float back over to them, their targets neutralized. "These skeletons might be super weak and easy to deal with, but having to deal with so many..."

"I wonder why there's so many of them here in the first place."

"Kinda what I'm wondering too. There can't've been _this _many scientists or people working in this place before, uh, whatever happened down here...happened, I guess? I don't know how to put it..."

"And Jeannie says she doesn't know anything about them..."

"Which I still think is bullshit, but no point in arguing that now." Liz exhales quickly and pats her own cheeks, as if trying to wake herself up. "Just think what kind of shit I'd've gotten myself into if I didn't have a Master, though."

"Well, we're - I'm the reason why we're down here in the first place, isn't it?"

"Aw hell no it's not _your _fault, it's Jeannie's fault! How's it _yours?"_

Elizabeth puts a heavy hand on Ritsuka's shoulder.

"Don't try to take someone else's responsibility," she advises calmly through her steadied panting. "We've all got our own fair shares to worry about first, don't we?"

"But even if it's her fault, it's something we still have to do," Lancer's Master replies steadfastly, causing Liz to let go of her shoulder.

"Yes, but...I have to wonder if this couldn't have been done _without _having to come down here, or at the very least before we know exactly what to expect."

The two of them, escorted by their Blacklight posse, proceed past the hub room of the second tunnel that Jeannie has tasked them to search, randomly choosing one of the three rooms that the hub connects to.

The doors that they pass through are jammed partially and unable to withdraw into their crevices to allow full access, so Liz puts her hands on the bottom door since they part horizontally and shoves it all the way down into the floor to clear the way. Taking point, Liz carefully steps into this new room, but it only takes her a few steps before she stops and mutters aloud,

"Master...I think we found it."

Upon entering, Ritsuka and Liz are greeted by another grisly sight. Indeed, this is the same kind of room that Ritsuka and Jeannie found at the first data center: a large circular room with a central pillar, four main computer terminals, and ten cylindrical holding cells in between them.

But there's more to the room this time: up on the walls, giant but malfunctioning computer screens gaze down at them weakly, large portions of them staticking out or composed of dead pixels. The four central computer terminals, too, are still on, but barely - they're more fortunate though, in the sense that their screens don't seem to have any other issues other than their intermittent flickering.

Blood is _everywhere_. The sheer amount of blackened, dried blood splashed on the walls, the floor, the computer equipment, the pillar itself - it's as if a serial killer tried their hand at replicating a Picasso painting and then realizing they didn't have a proper paintbrush to paint with. Ritsuka is surprised the room doesn't smell like blood - actually, it would make sense that there's no lingering stench of spilled blood anymore, with how long it's been here, but the room still smells musty and disgusting all the same. There are, of course, the accompanying skeletons that have already been maimed when they arrive, likely the sources of all the blood that's now this room's latest coat of human paint.

But the most disturbing addition to this room over its previous incarnation is -

"...hey, Master...I don't think I heard you mention anything about this."

Liz's voice demands Ritsuka's attention, so the latter snaps out of her stupor of staring around the room in search of more changes and hurries over quickly to her Lancer, who in turn is gazing down inside one of the large holding cylinders.

Inside lays a small skeleton, and it's just like the ones they've been destroying to make their way here. However, this one shows no sign of moving, at least not yet. Thick color-coded wires appear to be drilled directly into the scalp of the skull, mainly some on each of the sides, but also one directly above where the forehead would be. These wires are connected to the top of the cylinder's interior, and when Ritsuka glances around the back of the outside of the cylinder, the wires are replaced with one big black wire that snakes down to the ground and into the base of the pillar, along with the other black wires that also connect to the base but instead dig into the floor close by.

"These...weren't in here last time," Ritsuka shakes her head nervously. "Or, what I should say is, they were closed last time."

"Those aren't the same," Liz tersely remarks. "Did you try opening them?"

"No."

"Tch. Should've had Jeannie open them to see what was inside."

"Why, though?"

"Just in case. You never know...hey, call Jeannie."

A nearby Blacklight complies with Elizabeth's command and dials another call to Jeannie.

_"Sitrep."_

"We found the room. Can you make your way to us?"

_"Affirmative, tracking your location via Blacklight relay now...coordinates confirmed, this unit is inbound. Hold your position."_

In the meantime, Ritsuka glances back down again at the small skeleton lying inside its exposed canister. Just what are these skeletons? And if they're hostile enemies, why were there some locked up in those holding cells and then these ones here lying inside these canisters?

Perhaps due to the poor lighting from the room and from their Blacklights, Ritsuka only barely notices that there's something etched on the forehead of the skeleton's skull. Beckoning to her Blacklight, she points it so that its red light can illuminate the writing, if only to make it barely visible. It's what sounds like some sort of...serial number.

**SVR-002**

* * *

"Data extraction commencing, stand by..."

Jeannie, who's managed to track her teammates down thanks to the Blacklights she's given them, is now interfacing with one of the four main computer terminals in search of her mission-sensitive data package. Liz Alter and Ritsuka stand aside so that Jeannie can do her work, but they've made sure to put some distance between them and Jeannie so that they can talk discretely, hopefully without being overheard by Jeannie.

"Yeah, I don't see anything like that on her forehead," Liz shakes her head. "But remember that that number could be written on her actual skull itself. So obviously we can't see it as she is now. I doubt she'll just rip off her own skin just to prove that she doesn't have anything written underneath, though."

"I don't want her to, anyways," Ritsuka shudders.

"But we did learn one thing, and that's that these skeletons...they all have that same serial number or whatever written on their heads, like you noticed with the one inside that canister."

"Well, we don't know if it's _all _of them - "

"It's a good freakin' chance that it is, given that all the skulls of the skeletons we wrecked had the same number written on them, too. We have a large enough sample size to make that assumption...and besides, there's so little we know about what the actual hell's going on down here that we need one or two assumptions to work with."

Liz Alter slowly taps the bottom of her lance against the floor, her brow furrowed in thought. But as Ritsuka looks on with concern, Liz's brooding look is soon switched with a look of both enlightenment and horror. No sooner does this look register on the Lancer's face does she pull Ritsuka back further towards the curved wall of the large room to ensure that Jeannie won't accidentally eavesdrop on them.

"Listen to me, Master. This is pure speculation right now, so don't take this for the truth right away, but..."

Glancing quickly back at Jeannie to make sure she isn't looking their way, which she is not since she's concentrating on perusing the terminal she's at for the data she needs, Liz returns to glaring directly back into Ritsuka's confused and silently alarmed eyes.

"I think this facility manufactured the skeletons we've been fighting. And I think Jeannie's trying to take control of them."

"Uh...wh-what makes you think that?"

"Think about it, right? You get summoned to this weird Singularity...meet with some weird little girl who says she needs your help...and then she takes you to these godforsaken underground facilities that have these weird skeletons running around attacking you? Saying that these places have something that she needs, some - some data caches or whatever?" Liz gestures as she speaks, which Ritsuka notices she's never done so much before. "That's gotta be it - Jeannie wants to take back control."

"Control? Of this place? This dreamworld?"

"Yeah. She said it's hers, right? Here's what I think - this place, this Silva Gelida, something's gone wrong with it. Just looking at those zombie monster things we fought before we came down here, you can tell that they don't belong in a place like this. The same applies to those big cannon towers, they don't look like they belong either. She wants to restore her control over this realm, and I think she's trying to reactivate these skeletons to create her own army of sorts to help her restore her control."

"But then...if that's the case, why was she attacking them like we were?"

"Like I said before, to establish an alibi. She went off on her own, remember? We don't know what she's been doing in the meantime. She could've just ignored all the skeletons she ran into on her end."

"But these skeletons aren't really much in the way of, uh, soldiers, I guess...I'm not sure if I'm the one to talk, but these skeletons weren't really much of an issue, other than the fact that there's a...lot of them."

"The fact that those canisters in the middle have the same skeletons in them hooked up to this place, that tells me that the skeletons were always here to begin with, and they were. They didn't spawn in like the monsters did, we found them already chilling here before we came along and woke them up. And Jeannie behaves like a robot herself, too. These skeletons - they might be robots or something. And again, Jeannie's trying to assume control over them so she can use them to fight whatever she thinks doesn't belong in this world."

Ritsuka's eyes widen.

"Wait...so...so does that mean she'll eventually want to get rid of the Servants? Like you, the Archer you fought, and everyone else?"

"More than likely. Remember how she doesn't trust me? It's not a coincidence."

A cold sweat breaking out on her scalp, Ritsuka slowly glances over at Jeannie at the terminal.

And Jeannie staring straight back at them, still with her eyes sealed shut.


	18. Instructions

"Oh for fuck's sake, as if the goddamn skeletons weren't a big enough issue already..."

Predictably, the skeletons at the bottom of the artificial sinkhole have re-initiated themselves to rise up and attack the party when they emerge from the tunnels after having successfully retrieved the data package that Jeannie was searching for. They had already been found by a wandering group of hostile skeletons while Jeannie was finishing up data extraction, and they have rushed out to their landing zone in the middle of the silo floor to give themselves some space, only to find that many of the skeletons, mainly the ones that haven't been smashed to pieces already when they first arrived, were in the middle of awakening like zombies stirring at the arrival of humans in a movie.

But even as they arrived at the base floor of the silo, they've noticed an alarming amount of snow already piled up, having fallen all the way down from the mountain range sky above. And now that they've finished off the last of the skeletons in sight, Ritsuka stares blankly at all the snow before them.

"For there to be so much snow already, imagine how bad it is up top," Liz grumbles in annoyance. Dissipating her lance, she pulls up a nearby metal crate near the boundary of where the snow is building up on the ground and plops her butt down on it, letting out a tired sigh. "Guess we're waiting this one out, might as well get comfortable..."

Indeed, not only is there a significant amount of snow falling down the silo even now, but the echoing whirling, whistling, and screaming of snowy winds about a hundred meters overhead set a new ambience for the silo's interior all the way down to the bottom. While she's certainly bummed out at the fact that they need to spend a bit more time down in this gutter of a rest stop, at least the distant whistling of the snowstorm above makes the place seem a little less ominous, because total silence is something Ritsuka isn't sure she can deal with for extended periods of time.

"Respite not required. Mission profile imperative," Jeannie objects calmly, but Liz simply flips her the bird with an accompanying scowl.

"Fuck your mission profile, we're not going out there, not with me like this and especially not with Master with us."

"Unable to continue the mission?"

"Don't make it sound like I'm about to _die."_

"Monitoring Lancer's vitals indicates severe lack of physical stamina. Problematic detriment...even Master displays an impressive degree of stamina for a human mage."

"Hey, I'm _sorry _for having D-Rank endurance! Go blame that on my normal self for not working out more because she thought exercise was for muscleheads and brutes!" Liz Alter pouts hard, stamping her feet against the floor a few times in frustration. "I'll have you know that I've done physical training, but I can't seem to get anything out of it!"

Plopping her head down onto her arms, Liz allows her loud breathing to be heard sifting through the cracks in her arms.

"Some things you just can't change as a Servant, I guess..." she murmurs.

"Jeannie, she was the one who was doing most of the fighting between the two of us. Give her a break already," Ritsuka pleads with her first Servant. "Not to mention, I'm pretty tired too. We've been walking a long way just to get here, and then we've been dealing with enemies nonstop ever since we got here..."

Jeannie nods. "If Master requires rest, then rest comes first. ETA: fifteen minutes."

Mimicking Liz, Jeannie also pulls over a small metal case, sits down on it with the most perfect posture Ritsuka has ever seen, and falls motionless, as if sleeping sitting up, though it's hard to tell since Jeannie always has her eyes closed. Not wanting to waste any more of the next fifteen minutes, Ritsuka lays down on the ground next to Liz to rest.

"Jeannie, what did you find with this last data package you found here?" Ritsuka asks aloud, grimacing at the cold, hard sensation of the silo floor against the back of her head.

"Coordinates of Objective Charlie. Twenty klicks southwest of current location."

"Is that all?"

Jeannie slowly turns in Liz's direction. Liz herself still has her face stuffed against her folded arms against her knees, in an effort to regain the stamina that she's used to fight.

"I said, is that all you found?" Liz repeats herself with a slightly muffled voice again.

"Affirmative."

"That's bullshit."

Immediately raising her head, Liz glares back in Jeannie's direction this time.

"Even someone with no nose can smell how bullshit that is - it doesn't make any damn sense why we've been running around just to find a fucking computer that tells us where to go next like it's some kind of screwed up scavenger hunt," Liz argues heatedly.

"L-Liz, now isn't the time to be arguing about this - " Ritsuka tries to intervene, but Elizabeth wants to hear none of it.

"This has _got _to be said! And _now_, before this turns into a situation that's well out of control!" Liz Alter fires back. "Jeannie, I know you're hiding something. If you really care about getting Master out of this Singularity, it's in your best interest not to keep anything from her!"

"This unit is withholding no sensitive information. All intel is being shared with full transparency upon request by Master."

Liz snaps her gaze over to Ritsuka. "Master, put her to the test. Ask her to show you everything she's extracted from these computer terminals, both from the first one and this one we found here."

"Do we really need to go that far?"

"Then let me ask you this," Liz whispers fiercely. She drops her tone not in an attempt to keep herself unheard by Jeannie, but to adopt a much more serious tone that will hopefully convey to her Master just how urgently she feels about this matter. "Are you just gonna trust a random Servant you met out in the middle of some random fucking forest? Or maybe you find it easier to trust cute little girls who ask you to follow them?"

"But...I did the same for you when we first met."

"I know, and I'm grateful for that. But for your sake, I'm trying to tell you that this is an instance where you really shouldn't."

Ritsuka is getting a slight deja vu from this tense conversation she's having with Liz Alter, but then again it would potentially cause problems with Jeannie if Liz talked as if they'd already discussed these matters.

"We have the time to ask her now, and she seems willing to show you what she's got," Liz urges.

"But what if she doesn't have anything that looks suspicious? Then it'll just make us look like we're doubting her."

"Better safe than sorry. And don't worry about that, she already doesn't trust me anyway, remember? Not really a huge loss on my end, but on the other hand, this is _your _safety we're talking about."

Sensing that she won't be able to dissuade Liz from this, Ritsuka lets out a big sigh of her own and asks Jeannie, "Sorry, but...can we see what you've got?"

Jeannie nods and hops off her metal case seat to reposition herself closer to the others. She then produces two small circular runes the size of dinner plates by holding up her left hand in the air, and as she holds her hand in place, the two runes that she generates in the air slowly fill with digital font writing, as if she's processing the information she's acquired into a format that's more easily readable by her small audience.

* * *

_AAR INCOMING. WA FOB SAFEHOUSE-CHE. REPORT DESIGNATION: CO Juliet-Tango. Secondary: Sierra-Delta. LNO WASF: Juliet-Hotel WASF. AFTER ACTION MISSION REPORT: Classified WACF. SOCWA-C Eyes Only. Encryption #1-8-9-2-TANGO-1-0-2. OPERATIONAL PROTOCOL: Search & Restoration. Search in Progress. Mission Status: ACTIVE. DATE UNKNOWN.  
_

_Be advised, by the time you receive this AAR Silva Gelida will be compromised._

_Your callsign for this mission profile will be Jeannie Sawatari; update personal information cache where needed. Investigate the source of compromise in Silva Gelida and terminate; BAMN protocol is in effect._

_Compromise of Silva Gelida will allow for the summoning of a Master from another world. Summon him/her, for they will assist you greatly for this timeline. Failure to do so will result in the termination of Silva Gelida, or perhaps worse. What "worse" is maybe already be privy to you._

_Travel to Data Center Alpha, coordinates to follow at bottom. Central mainframe terminals contain your next data package with following instructions. Terminate all hostiles en route, there will be much of them due to compromised circumstances._

* * *

_AAR INCOMING. WA FOB SAFEHOUSE-SGP. REPORT DESIGNATION: CO Juliet-Tango. Standing OIC: Juliet-Hotel. LNO: Romeo-Kilo. AFTER ACTION MISSION REPORT: Classified WASF. SOCWA-E Eyes Only. Encryption #2-0-6-ECHO-6-FOXTROT-7-4. OPERATIONAL PROTOCOL: Search & Restoration. OPERATION #20-6E-6F-74 ACCEPTED. Data Center Alpha successfully tracked and marked.  
_

_Situation is degrading, sudden shifts in weather patterns will indicate degradation progress. Move quickly, time is of the essence._

_MAJOR INSTABILITY DETECTED: DATA CENTERS ALSO COMPROMISED. PROCEED WITH EXTREME CAUTION, TERMINATE ALL HOSTILES WITH EQUALLY EXTREME PREJUDICE._

_MAJOR INSTABILITY DETECTED: MEMORY LEAKS LOCATED IN DATA CENTER ALPHA. AVOID DOORS LEADING INTO FALSE WARP GATES, ENTRY CONSEQUENCE UNKNOWN. PROCEED AT OWN RISK. ERROR CODE 404 ERROR CODE 301 ___ERROR CODE 410 ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE ____ERROR CODE__

__Coordinates to Data Center Bravo as follows at bottom__

* * *

_AAR INCOMING. WA FOB SAFEHOUSE-EGY. REPORT DESIGNATION: CO Juliet-Tango. Standing OIC: Juliet-Hotel. LNO: Romeo-Kilo. AFTER ACTION MISSION REPORT: Classified WASF. SOCWA-A Eyes Only. Encryption #7-4-2-CHARLIE-2-0-4-4. OPERATIONAL PROTOCOL: ___Search & Restoration_. Data Center Bravo successfully tracked and marked._

_WARNING: DATA CENTER BRAVO COMPROMISED. SVR-002 PROGRAM HAS GONE ROGUE. CONTACT ADMINISTRATION STAFF AND ARRANGE IMMEDIATE EVACUATION FOR ALL PERSONNEL. THIS IS NOT A DRILL._

_WARNING: DATA CENTER BRAVO COMPROMISED. MAINFRAME SYSTEMS HAVE BEEN INFECTED. ALL FACILITY ELECTRONICS WILL BE SHUT DOWN. ADVISE IMMEDIATE SHUTOFF AND PURGE OF ALL NONESSENTIAL DATA._

_WARN__inG: DatA cenTeR BraVO coMproMiseD. StoRed reSeRveS oF [ReDAcTeD] gAs haVE beEn reLeAseD inTo the FaCILITy. EvAcuATioN iN prOgrexyzyxzyxzxyzxyzyxzyxzy zxyzxyzxyzx zx yzxzx yzxyz xyzyx xzyxzyxz zyx zyxzyx zyx zy zyxzxyzxyzyxyzxyzxyzyxzyxyzxy zy xzyzyxzxxyzyxzyzxyz yx zxyzyzyx _  
__yzxyzyxzyxzy zxyzwhereyzx zx yzxzx yzxyz xyzyx xzyxzyxz zyx zyxzyx zyx zy zyxzxyzxyzyxyzxyzxisyxzyxyzxy zy xzyzyxzxxyzyxzyzxyz yx zxyzyzmy___yzxyzyxzyxzy zxyzxyzxyzx zx yzxzx yzxyz xyzyx xzyxzyxz zyx zyxzyx zyx zy zyxzxyzxyzyxyzxyzmotryxyzxy zy xzyzyxzxxyzyxzyzxyz yx zxyzyzyher__xyzyxzyxzy zxyzxyzxyzx zx yzxzx yzxyz xyzyx xzyxzyxz zyx zyxzyx zyx zy zyxzxyzxyzyxyzxyzxyzyxzyxyzxy zy xzyzyxzxxyzyxzyzxyz yx zxyzyzyx__yzxyzyxzyxzy zxyzxyzxyzx zx yzxzx yzxyz xyzyx xzyxzyxz zyx zyxzyx zyx zy zyxzxyzxyzyxyzxyzxyzyxzyxyzxy zy xzyzyxzxxyzyxzayzxyz yx zxyzyzyx_

_Coordinates to Data Center Charlie as follows at bottom_


	19. Tenuous

Creaking of old, cold wood rattles the chilly air as a pair of small, wooled feet step across the boards underneath. The snowfall has worsened; what was once a dreamy trickle of snowflakes has now escalated into a downpour of entire globs of snow, accompanied equally in ferocity by wind and cold.

A lone lady, dressed in heavy red regal robes held about the waist by a thick belt, stops at the entrance of the wooden temple, setting delicate hand against the side of the doorframe. Embroidered gold crests decorate the front, back, and shoulders of her red robes with solemn, dynastic dignity, and medium-length, beautiful black hair drapes down to the top of her shoulderblades. A pair of clean white headphones with flat over-ear cups dons her head, protecting her ears from the elements as best they can, and the earcups present a special symbol: a circle with three swirling colors that forever chase each other - blue, red, and yellow.

Continuing to stand at the doors of the temple, the quiet lady remains standing still, as if entranced by the snowstorm raging outside. The slanted roof of the temple removes the need to worry about snow falling into the temple's interior so that the woman can watch the snowstorm in peace. Perhaps the only real change in her physical state is the softly glowing lights on the symbols of her headphones' earcups, alternating between their reds, blues, and yellows like an old computer screensaver.

"Are you fascinated by the storm, your Majesty?"

Turning her face to glance over her left shoulder, the silent robed lady reveals her eyes - deep ocean blue pearls peeking out shyly behind their black curtains, but her stoic, calm, and tempered expression masks the shyness in her eyes well, perhaps too well.

Heavy bootsteps have preceded and accompanied this second voice that calls out to her from the other side of the temple. It is not a large temple, so even from the other side the lady can hear the voice clearly through her white headphones. A second woman approaches, and her choice of garb couldn't be any more opposite: heavy cloth and leather armor in dulled shades of black and white that is splashed with wet snow. The heavily padded flaps around her waist top a gray skirt, which in turn covers her thigh-highed legs.

The newcomer slowly removes the padded helmet on her head with a soft grunt, exposing a tight knot of bright, fiery auburn hair, and she pats the snow on her helmet off as she continues,

"The snowfall is...somewhat worse than I remember," she remarks, offering a small grin of amiability to the robed, headphoned girl. Her voice is strong and commanding, yet refined and respectful. "How about you, your Majesty?"

"I agree. I do not remember a snowstorm quite as bad as this..." the first lady nods slowly. Just like their clothes, their voices also are practically polar opposites - soft, gentle, and reserved. But if there is one similarity to be found, it's the sense of conviction in both of their voices. "Also, there is no need to address me like that."

"As 'Your Majesty'?"

"Yes. We are both Servants now...my time as King is long since concluded. I believe I informed you of this when we first met."

"My apologies. Habits tend to die hard, after all..."

The armored girl takes the opportunity to continue forward until she is standing shoulder to shoulder with her acquaintance, which highlights the height difference between the two - the former is noticeably taller than the latter, at least a difference of four inches, though this is by no means to describe the latter as short herself.

"But for us to be summoned like this...fate truly is something strange," the armored girl smiles again, joining her friend in watching the snowstorm raging outside.

"Do you require tuning? You were patrolling for a while now."

"No need, nothing happened while I was out anyway."

The headphoned girl nods curtly. "Indeed, fate is strange. Perhaps just as strange as this world is."

"Were you able to find out anything about this place?"

"Only that we should not be here. It is quite the predicament."

"Explain it to me."

The robed lady slowly reaches up to her white headphones and pulls them off, letting them rest hanging around her neck.

"It seems we have been summoned to an abnormal world. I hesitate to call it a reality marble, because it is not the case of one's inner world being projected and materialized externally. Rather, I believe this world is an independent one - but extremely volatile and unstable."

"So I take it that this place won't last long?"

The quiet girl shakes her head. "No, it will not. Eventually, it will collapse into itself like a dying star and disappear, leaving no trace behind."

"How soon will that happen?"

"I cannot say. It depends on the projector of this world themselves...and how quickly they expire."

"Then what, we just sit around until the end?"

"Essentially, yes. There is nothing we can do about it."

"That's a damn shame, then..." the armored girl chuckles sarcastically. "What was the whole point of us being summoned here, then? Not that I mind, of course."

"I cannot answer that either. My best guess is that upon the birth of this unstable world, something akin to the Holy Grail War was triggered, and so we Servants were summoned...but clearly there is no Holy Grail War being waged at the moment. Certainly not in a place like this."

"Cut off from rest of this world, with no knowledge of why we've been summoned or what even to do with ourselves...what a great summoning we've had."

Surprisingly, the soft-spoken girl offers a wry smile of her own to her companion.

"But meeting me was enough for you, was it?"

"Of course. That made this all worth it," the armored girl reciprocates, "Won Jeong."

* * *

The snow storm still rages above the quiet trio at the bottom of the silo. It's been some time since Jeannie has shown her Master and Liz Alter the data packages that she's been gleaning from the data center computer terminals, and Ritsuka is sleeping soundly thanks to her exhaustion with her head on Liz's lap. Jeannie wanted to wake Ritsuka up so that they can continue their mission, but Liz opposed the notion, saying that if Jeannie truly needs Ritsuka to act as her Master for this mission, it would be in her best interest to not have Ritsuka stumble around half-asleep everywhere she goes.

"Hey, Jeannie. You still in the mood to talk?" Liz asks quietly so as to not wake Ritsuka up. The Lancer is playing with her Master's cheerful orange hair, dampened slightly by some stray snow that's blown a bit further off course from the rest of the blizzard.

"State your intention." Jeannie's Blacklight swords, still active and on guard duty in case of more skeleton attacks, vibrate with her words, but at least they don't seem to be hostile.

"I wanted to ask about those things you showed us. Those...instructions or whatever."

"Call them AAR's."

"What's an AAR...?"

"After Action Report."

"Ah...makes sense, I guess. Okay, so those AAR's, then...why were they like that...?"

"Elaborate."

"Like, the first one...the first one was normal. Looked normal, anyway. And then starting with the second, things looked weird. And then the third..." Liz Alter gazes over at Jeannie, who has gone back to sitting on the metal case that she'd pulled over to sit down on when they first took their break to avoid the worst of the snowstorm above them. "Is that why you're in a big rush? Because something bad's gonna happen if we don't?"

Jeannie inhales deeply, then exhales deeply. It's the first time Liz has ever seen Jeannie ever change her breathing pattern, though whether or not this is significant, she doesn't know for the moment.

"Silva Gelida is currently in a state of extreme flux," she explains softly. "Jeannie...this unit intends to identify the cause, and if possible, isolate and destroy or contain it."

"Do you know what's wrong with it?"

Jeannie shakes her head.

"Do you at least have a guess?"

"Possible causes are endless. Attempting to identify correct cause with current intel improbable."

"Oh come on, you know that's not true. You told us earlier that Silva Gelida is supposed to be _your _dreamworld, right? No way you at least don't know _something _about what's going on."

"Query: why do you wish to be informed, Lancer?" Jeannie snaps her gaze back to Liz, who can't help but feel a bit strange that Jeannie is able to do such a thing with her eyes closed.

"Because I don't know what you're up to. I don't know what you're planning, what your actual agenda is, and what you have in store for me and/or the other Servants...but most importantly, I don't know what Master has anything to do with here," Liz answers earnestly. "You already know about this, don't you? About my sentiments about you. You've been eavesdropping on us the entire time we've been down here, when we split up."

Jeannie slowly, perhaps awkwardly, retracts her icy, eyeless gaze. "Impressive. When did you notice?"

"It was a guess. An easy one, but still a guess. I mean, c'mon, floating mechanical swords that can act like flashlights and go around slicing things up on their own? Why _wouldn't _they be able to pick up sounds around them and record them? I'm not that smart, you know...if you were expecting me to sit here and give you a ten minute explanation of how exactly I was able to deduce that you were eavesdropping on us, that isn't gonna happen."

"Hmm."

"You sound disappointed."

"Incorrect. However, Lancer, you have stated previously that you were at one point an idol. Perhaps you thought of these blades as microphones?"

"Like hell I did. That was a long time ago, too, either way..." Liz clears her throat quietly. "But let me make this clear, in case it wasn't already: I don't trust you, Jeannie. To me, you're acting like you're hiding something from us. I don't care if you hide stuff from me - I'm just a Servant, it doesn't matter what happens to me. But if you're plotting something that's gonna put Master in harm's way, that I can't overlook. Like, when you were interfacing with those computer terminals back there, Master didn't even need to do anything for you. So why did you bring her here? Because it seems like there wasn't any need to drag her around to these data centers. You could've just gone and found these things on your own. So why? Why are you bringing her everywhere when it clearly doesn't seem like it's beneficial for her?"

Uncharacteristically again, Jeannie gives a long pause before replying. Liz glances back over at her in the meantime, a bit curious, and Jeannie appears to be wearing a somewhat pensive expression, though from Liz's angle and due to the lighting it's hard to say for certain.

"Classified," Jeannie finally says. "Clearance level...insufficient."

"Hey, hey, what the heck's that supposed to mean..." Liz sighs, and she, too, pauses for a lengthy while before speaking again. "Jeannie, I don't know what you're up to. But like I said, since I'm just a Servant, it doesn't matter what happens to me - "

"Redundant."

"Sh-Shut up! I know I'm repeating myself, give me a break!" Liz fumes quietly. "But seriously, if you're planning to betray me in the end or whatever, that's one thing...it's not as if I don't know what that feels like. But if Master gets hurt or put in danger for any of this, that's another matter entirely."

"Master's safety and well-being has always been top priority, Lancer," Jeannie responds icily, flipping her tone on a dime. "And it shall continue to be. If you have issues with this unit's courses of action, she suggests expulsion from this group...voluntary, or involuntary."

And all of the Blacklights in the area with them slowly rise up into the air, pointing themselves straight down at Liz Alter.


	20. Scrake

Luckily for the group, the sudden snowstorm seems to let up after only a few hours, so they take the chance to escape the artificial sinkhole before the snowstorm worsens. Ritsuka rides on Liz Alter's back while the Lancer nimbly climbs up the silo's circular walls to reach back up to the top, while Jeannie follows closely behind by having her Blacklight swords jam themselves into the walls to act as a mobile staircase for her to run up. And in case either Liz or Ritsuka slip and fall, she can be in a position to retrieve them quickly.

No such accident happens, thankfully, so all three manage to reach the top, though Liz Alter pants hard and needs to catch her breath.

"Sorry for making you do that, are you alright?" Ritsuka asks worriedly, since this is the hardest Liz has exerted herself, as evidenced by her panting and coughing for breath.

"I-I'm - I'm fine, i-it - _cough _\- was my idea anyway - _cough cough - " _Liz hacks and wheezes, forced to rest her palms against her knees. "Just - just - g-give me a minute - "

"Master, status check," Jeannie asks quickly, eyeing the environment around them. While the snowstorm has definitely lightened compared to before, it hasn't subsided completely, so there are still whipping winds and bullets of snow pelting them consistently from the perpetually dreary sky.

"It's definitely pretty cold, but I can last for now. Liz, here, let me help..."

Reaching her hands over to Liz's back, Ritsuka rests them firmly against her spine and focuses her magic into her hands, which begin to glow blue with energy. Within moments, Liz Alter feels her strained breathing and gasping for air become amazingly alleviated as her Master's mana being transferred to her directly like this rejuvenates her at a highly accelerated rate. After a minute of such mana transfer, Liz straightens up her back energetically and stretches out her arms and back.

"Whew, good to go! Where'd you learn a technique like that? That was amazing!"

"Medea Lily taught me this. Since there's a lot of Servants back in Chaldea, I wondered if there was anything I could do to help them recover more quickly, especially in these kinds of conditions," Ritsuka explains, gesturing around at the snowstorm still whirling around them. "She told me to try this - transfer mana through my hands, and apply them to a place on a Servant's body where mana can spread easily, like the spine."

"Oh ho, smart stuff. Yep, tagging along with a Master was the right choice," Liz nods to herself.

"Well, you didn't really have much of a choice, given how we met..."

"L-Let's overlook that one detail, I'm sure you won't mind doing that for me, right, Master?" Liz awkwardly asks her Master before putting her hands on her hips to focus at the task at hand. "So, what now? We got this snowstorm, and our little base is a ways off from here. Where are we headed now, Jeannie?"

"Data Center Charlie. However, weather conditions far from ideal..." Jeannie quickly runs some calculations through her head in an effort to mathematically determine their best course of action. "Retreat to safehouse, Lancer. Same plan as before: Blacklight launch for accelerated coverage."

"Got it. Do we need to get back up the hill again?" Liz sticks her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the nearest offline cannon tower that sits at the top of the rocky hill behind them.

"Affirmat - "

A dreadful roar resonates from the distance, somewhere over the hill behind their nearest cannon tower. Actually -

"...did that just come from the tower...?" Liz asks lightly, taken back by this sudden, eerily bloodthirsty roar.

Sure enough, off in the distance above them, a door at the base of the tower gets dented from the inside out from what appears to be a massive punch, judging by the fist mark in the middle of the metal door. Then another dent the shape of a fist bangs out from the inside, then another, then another, until the combo is broken by a terrifyingly loud and rusty chainsaw blade that rips through the dented metal like construction paper and tears the door in half.

What emerges is an extremely tall man who would otherwise be described as a humanoid pile of charred muscle and flesh armed with said chainsaw. He is easily over seven feet tall, wears nothing but ripped and torn Levi's, and is armed with his signature shrieking chainsaw that takes place of his left arm. His eyes are pure red with no pupils, and a metal plate is bolted against the lower half of his head like a half-balaclava that he can't take off.

"What the actual fuck is that?" Liz Alter blankly stares at this confusing abomination of a human being at first, unable to decide where to begin describing him.

"Cataloguing new enemy type. Estimating threat level..."

Murmuring to herself, Jeannie telepathically commands one of her Blacklights to rocket forth and attack this new hostile enemy. The blade indeed flies forward, and upon reaching the chainsawed man, who is walking slowly but menacingly towards the girls, it begins to jab and point and slash at him. The chainsaw giant raises his weapon in an effort to ward away the harassing blade, which really isn't getting anything done because of just how thick the monster's skin appears to be, so Jeannie sends forth two more blades to attack.

"I don't think those ones will do the trick, Jeannie!" Ritsuka calls out in alarm, watching the swords fly towards their target. "You might wanna pull out one of the big ones you have!"

Sure enough, as soon as the two reinforcing blades reach the monster and start attacking him too, the chainsawed man lets out a bloodcurdling roar, the same one as the girls had heard coming from the cannon tower a few moments ago, and to the girls' hair-raising alarm, he breaks into a full-on charge and stampedes down the rocky hill straight to them. With how slowly he'd been walking down the hill, the drastic change in his speed forces the girls to spring into action themselves, lest they wish to get sawed to pieces at the hands of this new enemy.

"Master, stay back! No idea about this one, we just gotta get our hands dirty!" Liz Alter quickly summons her lance. "Jeannie, back me up! And don't stab me in the back 'accidentally' just because it's convenient!"

"Friendly fire is strictly prohibited," Jeannie replies matter-of-factly as she motions to the Blacklight blades floating behind her, causing them to disappear since they appear to have no effect against this particular enemy.

"Bullshit, not with how you tried to kill me in the beginning!"

"Attempted Servant termination occurred before mutual alliance was established. Your argument is invalid."

"Oh for fuck's sake!"

With no more time to banter with her fellow Servant co-worker, Elizabeth pounces forward with great speed and meets the chainsaw monster two-thirds down the hill from the cannon tower from whence the monster has come; she opts for a simple but powerful forward thrust of her deadly spear as an opening attack to test the enemy's reactions and defensive ability, and the monster, in turn sensing the danger that Liz presents to him, adequately blocks the thrust with the flat side of his weapon.

But Liz doesn't stop there. Pulling her spear back quickly as soon as it's blocked, she raises it over her head for another powerful overhead swing, aimed directly for the monster's head to split it open. This too is blocked, but Liz's strength is apparent from how close the monster's chainsaw is brought to his own forehead from the impact of Liz's overhead.

This time, however, Liz doesn't pull back her spear; she tightens her grip on her spear and continues pushing down her spear against her opponent's chainsaw. Since the monster has used the flat side of his weapon to block again, this means that she can press her advantage without worrying about the chainsaw's teeth damaging her weapon, or at least not as much.

Letting out another frantic roar, the chainsaw man uses his superior weight to shift the force of Liz's attack to the side. Sensing his intention, Liz disengages and hops backwards a short distance to stay clear of the monster's range in case he starts swinging his chainsaw wildly, and while he doesn't do that per se, he instead continues charging straight at Liz to assault her again.

Out of left field, almost literally, Jeannie flashes into view directly to the chainsaw monster's left while airborne and delivers a hard kick directly into the side of the monster's neck, causing his head to buckle left with the kick. Such a deadly kick would have immediately snapped the spine of any normal human, but for the chainsaw man, it merely causes him to stumble a bit to his right and roar again, changing his target priority onto Jeannie. Liz, who was bracing herself for the onslaught, blinks in confusion that Jeannie would enter the fight personally like this, but Jeannie wastes as little of her surprise element as possible by following up her kick with a small storm of Blacklight blades. These blades are noticeably larger than the ones she's had out during their search of the silo, and she drops her hand to command them to rain down on the monster.

This time, the blades have enough weight and mass to them that they start to pierce and cut the monster's skin as he drops to his knees and raises his arms over his head to minimize his profile and protect himself as best he can, but that's really all they can still do, and the monster snarls back at them dangerously after the blades have done their work and stick out from the rocks like spikes around or behind him.

Liz doesn't want the monster back up on his feet, so she pounces again and strikes, slamming the tip of her spear down onto the brute again, this time gripping her spear with two hands for the thrust. Again the monster blocks, but this time he's blocking on his knees. However, this standoff doesn't last long because Liz doesn't realize how closely she's put herself to her opponent and that he still has his other arm to work with, which he uses to swipe at Liz to grab her. Liz barely reacts to the monster's grab in time and pulls herself away, but the monster is also able to riposte and swings his chainsaw at Liz, knocking her own weapon out of her hands in her haste. The chainsaw giant springs back up to his feet to avoid being put in that position again, and bellowing with maddening fury, he draws his chainsaw arm back to bisect Liz in a grisly fashion.

But before he can do so, Jeannie snaps back in, at the perfect moment when the brute is at his most vulnerable by having both of his arms out to his sides and not close to his body where they can protect his vitals. Grounded this time, she sinks her small fist into the giant's stomach - the height difference between the two of them is so stark that Jeannie has to reach up past her own head to land her punch. Nevertheless, it's a terrifyingly strong hit, because her fist sinks about three inches into the monster's stomach when it connects.

The monster coughs violently, though to an onlooker like Ritsuka, it would be hard to tell that it's a cough just off how foreign and animalistic it sounds. Jeannie doesn't let up, either: she immediately jams her left fist into the same place as her right fist, causing the monster to scream with pain this time. At first wondering how the monster is yelling with pain just from getting punched, Liz then realizes the reason when Jeannie pulls her right fist back again and punches the monster a third time, because this third hit produces a sudden tear of skin that comes from behind the giant.

Out of the bottom of his spine protrudes a Blacklight blade, a particularly large one at that. The monster is stunned, retching and gargling, and his legs and knees buckle and force him to kneel due to the puncturing of his spine. Even when kneeling, he's still almost taller than Jeannie, but that's all the better: she then slams her right palm against the giant's chest, and this time, five Blacklight swords burst out from the middle of his back, clattering against the rocks and pebbles behind him in a splash of reddish-black blood.

"Lancer," she calls out, taking a step back.

"You got it."

Stepping forward, Elizabeth plunges her spear squarely through the chainsaw man's thick and burly neck. Blood pops from where his mouth should be, though due to the bolted metal plate over it, blood simply dribbles down in droves behind it and starts dripping en masse from his chin and down his neck. Liz Alter tears her spear out to the left, and before the monster can flop over, she swings it back the opposite way, and with superhuman aim and precision, she finishes the decapitation and lops the monster's head clean off.

Jeannie watches the giant's head roll for a bit on the rocks before it comes to an uneasy rest, its bloody red eyes still open and staring emptily into space. The body is still twitching, namely its right arm, but after a few moments it, too, becomes still.

"I take it that you don't know what the hell this thing is either?" Liz grumbles, gazing down at the body of their fallen opponent, and the small Servant, predictably, can offer no reply.


End file.
